Who is She?

by V Clifford

  ‘That could be important. Can you remember exactly what she said?’

  Mand rubbed her hands over her face and into her hair in the same way that Viv often did. It was a habit they’d inherited from their mum. ‘Yes, she did say she was fond of Perthshire. It didn’t occur to me to ask if she’d been before. If you’d been staying somewhere else I wonder if she’d have stayed at home?’

  ‘So maybe there’s a reason, a specific reason for her to come here.’

  Viv grabbed her laptop and went upstairs. She’d have to take another look at those old documents.

  Mac stepped out of the bathroom with one towel wrapped round his waist and another in his hand rubbing his hair.

  Viv averted her eyes. He was in terrific shape. She said, ‘I need time out.’ She shut her bedroom door and lay prone on the bed. The emotional toll of spending time with the family was beginning to chalk up and what was Mac thinking walking about out there almost naked? She read a return text from Ruddy. He was out of the country unable to help and clearly not the man that her mum had just met, unless he was lying.

  She sent a text to Sal. She checked the time. Sal’s day would just be starting. No such thing as a weekend off with the FBI. She hoped she’d hear back immediately, but nothing happened. She guessed texts and emails were monitored but still she ought to have heard something by now even if they had been delayed on some data collection server for Homeland Security. She was under no illusion that Sal’s communication would be vetted.

  The other possibility, that she didn’t want to entertain, was that Sal was too busy enjoying her new job to respond. She booted up her laptop. There had to be a way of checking the CCTV. After a few blind alleys she did manage to hack into the right system, but the broadband kept cutting out and buffering. If her mum wanted to take risks who was she to prevent her? Mand was right; she was an adult. However, she did want to find out what the heck was going on and that meant taking another look inside her room. Her mum having a mobile seemed inevitable but ran counter to her phobia of telephones and any communication over the wire.

  She must have fallen asleep and woke with a start. She was cold and stiff again, but she was safe. The bedroom lamp was still on and her laptop lay at her side. She checked the time, two-thirty, middle of the night. She switched the lamp off, pulled the duvet over her and tried to settle back to sleep. Her head flooded with images of that poor woman. What had happened to her? How did she survive in freezing temperatures? The locals must know her or at least have seen her. She felt sick at the thought of the German finding her, but Mac said he was on it. She’d have to trust him for now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Monday

  At breakfast the following morning Mand and James were eating porridge and Mac was hovering over the Aga waiting for bread to toast. He said, ‘Sleep okay?’

  ‘Not bad. How come you’re here so early?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I’m worried about that woman. Hello, wee James.’ She rubbed the top of his head.

  Mac said, ‘Don’t be worried. Social services know her. She’s with them now. Apparently every few months they take her in and clean her up, but she always goes back out to wander. Can’t stand other people.’

  ‘And mum, anything?’

  ‘Nothing. But they think they have a partial registration number of a pick-up that was up there last night.’

  ‘So you’ve spoken to them already this morning?’

  He touched the side of his nose, ‘You don’t know the extent of my powers.’

  She snorted. In that kind of mood, she’d get very little sense from him. Better let him eat. She poured herself a coffee from the pot and slouched into a chair at the table. Her arms ached, her head thumped and her leg was throbbing. ‘My only consolation is that I don’t think he, or they, want to kill her. There’d be no point when they want something they believe she has. They need her alive.’

  ‘What exactly did he say to you?’

  ‘He said that he wanted money back that belongs to him. He believes that mum has it and that we’ll inherit it . . .’

  She left that hanging for a minute. ‘So maybe . . .’

  Mand said, ‘No, don’t say that. That would mean he intends to . . .’ She stifled whatever she was going to say next and buried her face in James’ hair.

  Mac said, ‘They are searching for the pick-up. Soon as we get positive . . . ‘

  Viv interrupted, ‘He surely can’t have gone far. He won’t go away unless he gets what he came for. And for that he needs mum or us. Can we access the bunker?’

  Mac nodded, ‘Yes. Most of the rooms will be locked, but I’ll do my best to get keys.’

  ‘How did he know about the bunker? Could that just have been chance? Or does he have a connection?’

  She thought of the photographs with military huts in the background. ‘Think Viv, think,’ she whispered.

  ‘If we get those photographs out again we can have them enhanced. See if anything more shows up that might identify where they were taken and who the man was.’

  Viv pushed her chair back, but Mac stopped her.

  ‘Breakfast first.’

  ‘God, you’re so bossy.’

  Mand shook her head, ‘You two should get a room. You’re like a . . .’

  Viv said, ‘Spare me. Don’t even go there.’

  Mac smiled, ‘It’s a love hate thing, but mostly . . .’

  Mand said, ‘I’m not daft. There’s very little hate going on in this room.’

  Mac put a rack of toast on the table and handed Viv a plate.

  Mand smiled, ‘I rest my case.’

  Viv said, ‘By the way what do you think the “Etcetera” at the end of that letter meant?’

  Mac shrugged, ‘Not sure, but I know a man who will.’

  ‘We should go through all her correspondence again. See what she was actually being called to do. Something’s bound to come to light.’

  Mand shook her head. ‘I’m not happy. I feel bad about going through her personal papers.’.

  ‘Even if it means they could save a life?’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re being melodramatic?’

  ‘No, I don’t. If you don’t want to be around when we do this that’s fine.’

  ‘I have to go back to Edinburgh anyway. James has an appointment with the nurse.’

  Viv gave her a questioning look, but she didn’t elaborate. ‘Fair enough. But you’ll come back here after it?’

  Mand shrugged, ‘I wasn’t planning to.’

  Mac said, ‘Probably best to keep you all under one roof. Makes it easier to look out for you.’

  Mand didn’t answer, just pushed her chair back and took James upstairs. ‘I’ll go get him ready.’

  Once she was out of earshot Viv said, ‘D’you think it’s safe for her to go?’

  ‘How would I know? But I’d like to see you try and stop her. I’ll call in her registration number; get someone on her tail.’

  ‘Thanks. As soon as she goes we’ll get that bag down and go through it line by line.’

  ‘I thought you’d want to go back to the bunker. The forecast is for snow later.’

  ‘Okay, bunker first, papers after. Sound like a plan?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The drive back up the hill, past the wood and parking where the pick-up had been didn’t have much of an effect on her. Mac handed her plastic gloves and bootees. She hunkered down to check the tyre tread marks, scouring the ground around to see if anything had been left behind, but because it had been so cold the ground was rock hard and indentations were minimal. The descent into the bunker, now a crime scene, along the concrete corridor made her belly contract and her mouth dry up. She wondered how he’d reacted when he realised she’d escaped. Then it occurred to her that he might not know. He might have left her there to rot. It wasn’t safe to assume that pick-up that she heard last night had been him. There were a couple of farms up on the Braes; it could have been someone going to them.

&n
bsp; She said, ‘He might not know that I’ve managed to escape. Wherever he is now he might be imagining me freezing to death down here.’

  Mac nodded. ‘We should try and question your woman. The guys who picked her up said she was in no state for anything but a bath and a good meal.’

  ‘We could try but I don’t think we’d get much out of her. She was definitely a woman of few words.’

  ‘Worth a go, though.’

  ‘Sure. What should we do first, the papers or find the woman? You think she’ll still be with social services?’

  He shrugged. ‘They’d have no way of keeping her against her will. I’ll make a call.’

  They reached the room where Viv had been kept. Mac pushed the door open with one fingertip, careful not to touch anything. Her attacker’s prints would be everywhere; he hadn’t worn gloves. She felt her anger rise and pushed it away with long slow breaths. She thought of where her mum might be. Could he have dealt with Viv then found her mum? If he hadn’t mentioned that her mum had money belonging to him she’d have believed that the two incidents could be separate. But he had, so the connection was real.

  Viv wandered out of the bunkroom, and tried the next door. It was locked. She tried the next and the next until the fifth door opened. From the smell coming from inside she knew that the woman had been in there. Plastic bags filled with plastic bags covered all available floor space, a couple of huge duvets with filthy covers and a load of blankets, some woollen, some fleece, lay over in one corner. A mark on the concrete floor indicated where a hot pot had been laid down. She must have had a camping stove or some way of heating food and water. Viv sighed, concerned about the desperation of the woman. To choose to live like this the poor creature had to believe there were no other possibilities. Living down there was like living in a cave but without the threat of wild animals. Then Viv’s presence had terrified her, threatened her safe space. She rubbed her eyes to rid herself of the vision of the woman screaming.

  Mac came in behind her. ‘Wow. Not exactly homely.’

  Viv said, ‘Can we get her proper help?’

  ‘Only if she wants it. It’s the old story; you can lead a horse to water and all that. Come on, let’s get back to the house and go through the papers.’

  ‘She saved my life.’

  ‘You think I’d have given up?’

  She stared at him. ‘No, I don’t suppose you would have.’ She took his arm and they made their way outside, both blinking to adjust their eyes to the daylight.

  Back at the cottage Mand’s car had gone, but there was another in its place. Mac parked and Ruddy extricated himself from the passenger seat of the dark saloon.

  Mac said, ‘To what do we owe this pleasure? It must be serious to bring you here at this hour of the day.’

  Ruddy replied, ‘You know the form. Family first.’

  Viv cracked, ‘I didn’t think I qualified as family.’

  Ruddy stared at her.

  Something in his look. She might be family, but her mum had put in more time.

  Mac filled the silence. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  She put the kettle on.

  Ruddy gestured at her wrists. ‘Painful?’

  Mac responded, ‘He made sure she was well secured.’

  Ruddy slowly nodded his head.

  Viv said quickly, ‘Mac, can you make coffee and I’ll go up and get the bag?’

  ‘Eh, I don’t think so. How about you stick to coffee making and I’ll get the bag?’ It wasn’t really a question.

  Mac returned and hoisted the bag onto the kitchen table.

  Ruddy raised his eyebrows. ‘She a hoarder?’

  Mac nodded, ‘Not too much, but enough to be interesting.’ He pulled papers and photographs from the bag.

  Ruddy stiffened and stared at the large picture with Viv’s mum and the woman in prison issue uniform. He tapped it with the tip of his thick forefinger. ‘Cul . . .’

  Viv put mugs of coffee on the table. ‘What’s that?’

  His head gave an almost imperceptible shake, but he said, ‘Not far.’

  She persisted, ‘What is it?’

  Ruddy said, ‘Oh was, all sorts of things. A POW camp mainly disused after World War 2.’

  ‘Mainly, but not entirely?’

  He shrugged. ‘As soon as one war was over another began. Civilians thought that everything was finished, closed down, after VE day, but it wasn’t like that at all. A whole new threat had emerged.’

  Viv and Mac waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

  Mac said, ‘The Cold War?’

  Ruddy nodded. ‘It took until the late fifties for camps like Culty to have their World War 2 ordnance decommissioned and then it was only because there were accidents. A child killed; a man and his son blown up. Only one survived but he lost an arm. Piles of ammo all over the country, and nowhere to put it. There seemed no point in keeping bullets, grenades and the like, since a completely different kind of danger was looming. Every nation wanted the latest tech. No one cared what happened to a few hundred boxes of grenades. What damage could they do compared to the H-bomb?’

  ‘What does any of this have to do with my mum?’

  He scratched his head. ‘I’m not sure yet, but she contacted us about five years ago. She’d never done that before so we paid attention.’

  ‘Okay.’ Viv rubbed her face in frustration. ‘Who’s “we” and to what did you pay attention?’

  Ruddy looked at her full in the face. ‘It shouldn’t have become a thing. We’d sorted it. But now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘This “thing”, could it endanger her life?’

  Ruddy said, ‘Let’s talk about what happened to you first.’

  Viv sighed, but knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘I was attacked up on the hill and dragged to a bunker.’

  He raised his eyebrows and glanced at Mac, but nodded at Viv to continue.

  ‘So the guy who grabbed me tied me to a bunk and left me unconscious. Luckily for me a woman came and cut me loose. The man has a German accent and a twitch beneath his right eye. It reminded me of another German I met only this week. A pianist who had been asking questions about me. He also had a twitch in the same place. Family tic; do families have tics? I don’t know, but it seemed too much of a coincidence. Anyway, my attacker thinks that my mum has money, a substantial amount of money that belongs to him, or he believes is rightly his. And clearly he’s making an effort to get it back. My only consolation is that he knows he’ll only get it back soon if she’s alive. She doesn’t have it. I know she doesn’t.’

  Mac said, ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Because I’ve seen the receipt.’

  She went to the tapestry bag and rooted around. ‘It seems odd that she’d leave it in Edinburgh and bring the rest of this stuff with her. It’s got to be in here somewhere.’

  ‘She’s a wise woman, Viv. If she left it she’ll have had reason to.’

  She pointed to the photograph lying on the table in front of Ruddy. ‘Who is she? What’s her connection to the two Germans?’

  ‘Their mother probably, but without checking her file I can’t say for sure.’

  ‘And my mum’s connection to her?’

  Ruddy began to flick his nails.

  Mac said, ‘There’ll be some clue in here.’ He took out more papers and began to leaf through them. ‘Viv, you take these and see what you come up with.’

  Ruddy pushed his chair back from the table. ‘I’ll leave you to it. I might be able to find a number somewhere.’

  ‘What kind of number?’ Viv was curious.

  ‘A mission number. There could be more than one. I’ll keep you posted and you do the same. You’ve both got my emergency line.’

  Viv and Mac nodded as Ruddy walked to the door. He paused. ‘I don’t think she’ll be in any danger. She knows what to do.’

  Viv said quietly, ‘I wish I were so confident.’

  Ruddy sounded quite kindly. ‘You should give her some
credit.’

  Viv snorted, ‘For what? I’d no idea until this week that I had a spy for a mother.’

  He said, ‘Mac, have you got a minute?’ They closed the door quietly as they went out.

  When Mac returned Viv asked, ‘What was that about?’

  ‘Oh nothing, there’s stuff going on at HQ.’

  ‘Is it to do with your boss who “left”?’

  ‘God, no. Once you’ve gone you’ve gone. His department had already started cleaning up before he cleared his desk.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  ‘The NTF have always been guests at Fettes. Now Police Scotland want more input from us to their other departments.’

  ‘And there’s a problem with that kind of sharing caring stuff.’ She smiled. ‘You can bluff it. Give them a little bit of this and a little bit of that to keep them happy.’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t know why you don’t run my department.’

  ‘Never mind that boring office shit. Tell me you don’t think all this is weird, I mean really weird. He,’ she pointed to the door as if Ruddy were still there, ‘doesn’t need to be involved in a family drama.’

  ‘Like the boss said, once in the “family” always in the “family”.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck sake, you sound like a character from a 1960s thriller.’

  They sat in silence as they read through the papers. Viv made notes and sighed a lot. Her mum had been flown to Berlin and back in a single day more than once. What was she doing there? Why her? Her mum must have been chosen for a reason. She handed a sheet to Mac. ‘Why do you think they wanted her for this one? From what I can make out most of her trips were on UK soil.’

  His eyes flitted across the document. ‘The date on this is obscure. I bet if we can get it under an x-ray we’ll find the exact date. Unless of course this is the mission that Ruddy was talking about. He’ll get back to us as soon as he finds out but meantime why don’t you and I take a look . . .’

  His phone rang and he checked the screen. ‘I’ll take this.’ He wandered out to the porch.

  She wondered if it was just a privacy habit, or if he thought he got a better signal out of doors. Her own phone buzzed; the arrival of a text from an unknown number. She hoped it would be Sal. It wasn’t. She stared in horror at a video of her mum holding up a copy of the Scotsman. Her hands were tied in front of her and she spoke slowly, directly to the camera. Viv opened up her laptop and clicked on her email. She had to view this on a bigger screen.