Their Final Act

by Alex Walters

  Alicia hesitated, as if unsure what to say. 'No, not really. Not with Elizabeth.' Alicia was silent for a long time, still carefully tugging away at the weeds, and Jane thought she wasn't going to say any more. 'It was her dad. He… did things. I let him do things.'

  'Jesus, that's awful. Did you tell anyone?'

  'No, that's the thing. At first, I didn't really realise it was wrong. Or maybe I did but I didn't want to think it was. Then I felt bad about it. I thought it was my fault that it had happened. Elizabeth tried to warn me off. I thought she was pissed off with me, and we had a row. I mean, a real big row. We stopped being friends and so I stopped going to her house. I tried to contact her dad a couple of times but he never responded.'

  'Probably lucky for you he didn't.'

  'Aye, I know that now. Elizabeth was just trying to protect me. But I didn't realise it.'

  'So you think she's okay then? I mean, you like her?' Jane realised that these were the questions she'd been unconsciously asking herself since she'd first encountered Elizabeth. There'd been moments when she'd thought Elizabeth must be decent, well-intentioned. Others, often almost at the same time, when she'd decided Elizabeth was an utterly ruthless bastard. Jane had no real evidence to support either judgement, and with most people the question wouldn't even have occurred to her on such a short acquaintance. There was something about Elizabeth that generated a more extreme response.

  Alicia hesitated again. 'I don't know, to be honest. She makes me feel… I don't know… uncomfortable. I don't trust her. That's awful, isn't it?'

  'I don't know,' Jane said. 'I've felt the same about her. There's just something–'

  'How's it going?' Munro said, from behind them.

  She'd approached without either of the two younger women noticing, and Jane wondered how much she might have heard of their conversation. 'You'd better check we're picking out the right plants,' she said.

  Munro peered into the bucket, and then sifted through it with her hand. 'That looks fine, dear. And the bed's beginning to look good. Getting rid of all the ones we don't want.' As so often with Munro, there was an edge to her words that Jane couldn't interpret.

  She was about to offer some response when there was a shout from across the lawn. She turned and saw Henry Dowling waving to Munro. Munro waved back and then strode across the lawn to meet her.

  'Thought I should let you know,' Dowling called, her voice carrying clearly across to Jane and Alicia. 'I was just heading home when I saw Elizabeth.'

  'Elizabeth? Where was she?'

  'Waiting at the bus stop in the village, would you believe? I asked where she wanted to go. She was being a bit optimistic. She'd just missed a bus and the next one isn't for ages. She didn't seem particularly worried. Said she needed to get into Inverness to do a bit of business. I didn't really know what to do. Hadn't time to drive her in myself. In the end I took her back home to pick up the car, then drove her down to near the Tore roundabout. There are more buses go past that way so I thought she'd got more chance of getting one without having to wait forever.'

  'That's good of you, dear,' Munro said. Her voice was noticeably quieter than Dowling's had been, but Jane could still just about make out the words. 'Did she say what sort of business?'

  'No. Not a word. I didn't press her.'

  'I don't suppose it matters. I just hope she's not left waiting too long.' Munro paused. 'Since you've come back, do you want to have a look at those fences with me? Give me your expert view?'

  Dowling nodded. 'If you like. Nothing spoiling.'

  Munro smiled and turned back to the two other women. 'You two carry on up here. If you need a break, there are cold drinks in the fridge.'

  Jane watched as the two women disappeared off into the farmyard, then she turned back to Alicia, who was still busily tugging away at the weeds, concentrating as if conducting some highly complex task. 'I wonder where Elizabeth's gone.'

  Alicia frowned. 'She's always seemed to me like someone who has secrets. Even when she was at school.'

  'Maybe one of them was her father. From what you told me.'

  'I thought that. Not at the time. At the time I just thought he was interested in me. God, I was stupid. But then, later, I wondered whether that was one of the secrets that Elizabeth was keeping. She always seemed like someone who was – I don't know – juggling different lives. As if there was more than one Elizabeth.'

  'Maybe that was how she coped with her dad,' Jane said, thinking how often she'd lied to neighbours and family about what Iain was really like. How her mam had told the same lies about her own father.

  'Maybe,' Alicia said doubtfully. 'But it felt the same yesterday. As if she was holding things back. As if she wanted us to talk about ourselves, but wasn't prepared to do it herself.'

  That didn't sound particularly surprising to Jane. Elizabeth had struck her as someone who was very self-protective, who'd been damaged before and didn't want to be damaged again. She could sympathise with that, even though she knew she'd never be able to achieve the same detachment.

  Oddly enough, she'd had the same feeling about Netty Munro. That she wanted her guests to talk about themselves and their experiences – even though she'd insisted that it was their own choice whether to do so – but she'd been reluctant to discuss her own past. She'd revealed a little when Elizabeth had identified her, but Jane guessed she'd said nothing that wasn't already in the public domain.

  Jane wondered also about Elizabeth's motives in revealing Munro's identity. Her father had been a fan, she'd said. The same father who'd abused Alicia and probably Elizabeth herself.

  Alicia was right, Jane thought. It felt as if there was an undertone to whatever Elizabeth said, as if there was some meaning she wasn't articulating. Some secret never quite revealed.

  Jane turned back to the weeding, recommencing the mindless task of clearing the soil. Her brain was already elsewhere, struggling to find answers to questions she barely understood.

  27

  'She was certain?'

  'Afraid so. From the way she'd been behaving, I thought she might say no. That she might not even believe her own eyes. But it only took her a second. Now you're telling me I needn't have bothered putting her through all that.'

  Helena Grant shrugged. 'Not exactly. I always feel more comfortable with a personal identification.'

  'I'm not sure those involved would necessarily share your comfort,' McKay said. He knew he was being unfair, but he'd found the session with Bridget Young even more challenging than he usually found dealing with grieving relatives. It wasn't his strong point. He felt uneasy dealing even with his own emotions let alone those of others. His first instinct was to walk away and leave them to it, because that's how he'd want them to treat him if the situation were reversed.

  Bridget Young had been more difficult than most. She'd spent the journey to Raigmore Hospital alternately denying that the body could be that of her husband and collapsing in tears at the certainty that it must be him. Neither response seemed entirely convincing to McKay. He had the increasing impression that the most important thing in Bridget Young's life was Bridget Young, and that her behaviour was more about drawing attention to herself than concern for her husband.

  At the hospital, she'd initially declined to enter the mortuary, declaring the whole visit a waste of time. McKay had been on the point of acknowledging she might well be right, when Horton had succeeded in working her persuasive magic. She'd accompanied Bridget Young to view the body and returned just a few minutes later. Young's face gave nothing away but she looked at McKay and nodded. 'It's him all right. What the hell was he doing up here?' Her tone was that of a cartoon wife greeting her returning husband after a long session in the pub.

  'That's what we need to find out, Mrs Young. We won't trouble you further for the moment, but we will need to talk to you again.'

  She looked at McKay blankly, as if not taking in his words. 'I need to get home,' she said, her voice suddenly anxious as if he'd threaten
ed to abandon her in the lobby of Raigmore Hospital.

  'DS Horton will take you back,' McKay said. 'Is there someone who can be with you? I appreciate this must be an awful shock.'

  'I'll call my sister,' Young said. 'She'll come over. I don't know how to explain–'

  'I can do that for you, if you prefer,' Horton said.

  Young nodded. She seemed emotionless, McKay had thought at the time, but then relatives often did when faced with the death of a loved one. It took them time to absorb what had happened, as if some part of their brain still believed everything would continue as before. The emotion often came later, triggered by some trivial reminder of the deceased.

  'Are these private thoughts you're having,' Grant asked, 'or can anyone join in?'

  McKay looked up, unaware how long he'd been silent. 'I was just thinking about Bridget Young and how she behaved after confirming the death of her husband.'

  'Something suspicious?'

  'Not in itself, no. It's just…' McKay stopped. 'I suppose she just struck me as a bit flaky.'

  'We're all flaky when faced with that kind of trauma.'

  McKay knew that Grant was speaking directly from experience, though he couldn't recall her seeming remotely unstable even at the time of her husband's death. Bridget Young had been something else again. 'I'm probably wrong. But it's maybe worth keeping an eye on her.'

  'You think she's a suspect?'

  'She has to be, doesn't she? Until we can prove otherwise. She tells us he's in Edinburgh. He turns out to have returned up here apparently without telling her. But it's not so much that. I just wonder about the state of their marriage.'

  'That way madness probably lies,' Grant said.

  'Aye, tell me about it. But it's more what it might tell us about Young's own lifestyle. And I'm wondering where he was killed. The docs reckon that the body hadn't been moved too far after death.'

  'So it's most likely that he came back up here but didn't bother to tell his wife,' Grant said. 'We can presumably check with the studio and the band if his work down there was finished. From what you've said, he'd turned up unannounced before.'

  'Apparently, though Christ knows why you'd do that.'

  'In the hope of catching her out? Maybe he thought she was having an affair.'

  'And maybe she was,' McKay said. 'Or maybe he was. Seems to have suited him to be incommunicado.'

  'Lots of potentially fruitful avenues for you to explore then.'

  'Let's hope so.'

  'Have we found out who this band was he was working with?'

  'Not yet. His wife couldn't remember. Get the impression that all that stuff isn't really her scene. But she's going to dig out the studio info and give it to Ginny.'

  'So we should be able to find out when he left Edinburgh. Or at least when he was last seen there.'

  'We should,' McKay agreed. 'But now you've done your level best to change the subject, let's go back to where we started. You were telling me that by the time I got up here with the news, you'd already confirmed his identity as Ronnie Young.'

  'Aye, well. Like I say, nothing beats the personal touch. But, yes, it looks like he was already on the system. Fingerprints were a match.'

  'Why was he on the system?'

  'Because Mr Young had been in trouble with us before.'

  'This go back to the stuff with the band? That was years ago. Surprised he was on the system from then.'

  'No, this is slightly more recent. Up here. About twenty years ago.'

  'Go on.'

  'Allegation of sexual assault and rape. Woman he was managing at the time. It seems that as well as the pop star period and the production stuff, he also had a spell managing local talent. Not all that successfully, from the stuff I've seen on the file. They were local club acts or similar that he thought had potential. He took them onto his roster, did some demo recordings for them, managed them on the circuit, but also tried to get them their big break.'

  'Just a wild shot in the dark,' McKay said, 'but were these mainly young women?'

  'Jesus, you're an old cynic, Alec McKay. I don't know, to be honest. This is just stuff I gleaned from a skim of the file and a quick online search of the media coverage at the time. But it wouldn't surprise me. The woman who made the allegations claimed it wasn't an isolated incident and she could draw on supporting testimony from others who'd had similar experiences.'

  'So what happened? As if I couldn't guess.'

  'Never came to court. Procurator initially didn't think there was a realistic prospect of a conviction. Then the supposed supporting testimony seems not have materialised for whatever reason, and there were some uncertainties about the allegations that had been made.'

  'Uncertainties?'

  'Usual stuff, as far as I can see. Young raised questions about her motives. She was supposedly resentful about her lack of success under his management. He reckoned she was difficult to work with and she knew he was thinking of dropping her from his roster. So the allegations were just her way of getting her revenge in first.'

  'The usual bollocks, in other words.'

  'Quite possibly. Usual story anyway. It came down to her word against his. He'd already cast enough doubt on her motives to give the Procurator the jitters.'

  'What about the supporting allegations?'

  'Like I say, nothing ever materialised. Maybe that was just a bluff, or maybe the others couldn't be persuaded to take them forward. It takes a fair bit of bottle to bring a formal allegation. In any case, in the end the woman in question dropped the allegations herself. Some nonsense about how she must have misinterpreted the situation.'

  'Aye,' McKay said. 'Not easy to bring allegations against a manager who might hold the key to your future success. Or at least has persuaded you that he does. I wonder what he promised her to make her drop the allegations.' McKay shook his head wearily.

  Grant shrugged. 'Things are improving. Slowly. And we've never been blameless.'

  'Christ, no. And we still aren't. But when you see people walk away scot-free…'

  'You got one of those "This is what a feminist looks like" T-shirts hidden away at home, Alec?'

  'No, but I've got one of those "This is what a serious copper looks like" ones. I just like to see justice done.' He paused. 'How long ago was this?'

  'Like I say, over twenty years.'

  'Do you think we should be looking at the woman who brought these allegations?'

  'It's a bit of a stretch. If she'd wanted to take the law into her own hands, why wait so long?'

  'If she was right about Young, it could well be that she's not the only victim. There could be more recent ones.'

  'Anything's possible. Though how would that link to Jimmy McGuire? It's hard to imagine the two cases aren't connected.'

  'I'm just asking questions,' McKay said. 'Don't expect me to have answers as well.'

  'Aye, well, they're sound enough questions. And I suppose the first answer is that, yes, we probably should go and talk to the woman in question. Even if she's not a serious suspect, she may be able to give us some insights into Young.'

  'From what you've said, she'll certainly be able to do that. What's her name?'

  Grant flicked through the file in front of her. 'She was a bit different from a lot of the artists on Young's roster at the time apparently. A bit older, better established. Which is maybe why she felt more able to speak out than some of the others.'

  'For all the good it did her.'

  'She'd been a fairly big name on the local country music circuit. Was apparently hoping that Young could help her make the jump to mainstream success.' She paused in skimming through the pages. 'Here we go. Her name's Dowling. Henrietta Dowling.'

  28

  Jack Dimmock always woke too late these days. He hated that, or at least he told himself he did. With the days growing longer, he wanted to rise early while the morning was still fresh. He wanted the sense of the whole day stretching before him, giving him real time to make progress with his
work.

  He felt that regret, that anger with himself, every day as he finally lurched out of bed around noon. He hadn't meant to do that. He'd set an early alarm, as he always did, every well-intentioned evening. When the alarm sounded, he'd just rolled over and turned it off, scarcely even conscious he was doing so. The next he knew, the morning had already gone.

  His whole life was like this. An endless process of self-recrimination for actions he seemed unable to help. A series of seemingly involuntary actions that he almost immediately regretted. The reality was his life had long been out of control, and there seemed to be nothing he could do to get it back on track.

  When he'd moved out here, he'd said it was because he was finally going to write the novel. He'd always promised he'd do that one day, even back in the days when he was successful. On the verge of being successful anyway. I won't do this forever, he'd told himself. I'll give it up and do what I really want to do. I'll lock myself away and just write. He was brimming with ideas for novels and stories, though he'd told himself then that they'd want him to do the autobiography first. Okay. He'd do that, just to prove he could. That he could do it himself, not through some bought-in ghostwriter. When that took off, he could turn to writing the stuff he really wanted to.

  He'd been half right. He hadn't carried on doing that forever. In fact, he hadn't carried it on for much longer. That life had come to an abrupt juddering end when he'd been sent down. If that hadn't happened, they'd maybe have carried on and hit the heights he'd always thought they were destined for. As it was, there was nothing. Not for him. Not for Jimmy.

  At least Jimmy had come away relatively unscathed, the bastard. Sure, his career had been wrecked too, but in the circumstances he could hardly be too resentful about that. He should just have been grateful he hadn't been shopped. It could easily have been both of them inside.

  Jack knew that Jimmy was only too aware of that. Jimmy knew how close he'd been. Not that he'd ever said a word of thanks. But that was never Jimmy's way. He knew Jack Dimmock wouldn't spill the beans. Jack was loyal to his friends. He wasn't a grass. Or, as his ex-wife put it, he was weak as piss. But that wasn't the real reason. The real reason was that Jimmy could produce far more and worse dirt on him if he chose. That was Jimmy's way.