by Jane Renshaw
Mum was glaring at Mrs Harvey now. ‘What on earth has that got to do with it? Damian’s influence can surely be nothing but positive.’
Great. Harvey could evidently say what she liked about Karen, but as soon as she started in on Damian, Mum was on it like a tigress.
Thanks a lot.
And now the glass had tilted right over and fuck fuck fuck! She was having to swallow and swallow all the mucousy tears, and they were spilling out of her eyes so she had to blot them with her sleeve.
‘All right,’ sighed Mrs Harvey. ‘I hope this has at least given you some food for thought, Karen.’ She looked at her watch. ‘You’d better get to your next class.’
Mum rubbed her arm, all puppy-dog eyes, and Karen hated herself so much, she hated being like this, she hated people looking at her all the time like Poor Karen, she’s such a fucking mess.
‘I’ll be along in a minute,’ said Mum.
Because her next class was a cello lesson with her own mother.
Fantastic.
Her life was just fantastic.
◆◆◆
Claire was doing her best to make the fear her friend, but it was hard to feel positive about it when you were sweating like a pig, and your hands and knees – knees, for God’s sake! – were shaking, and a nasty little trickle of sweat was inching its way down your spine. It didn’t help that the sun was streaming through the windscreen and she was wearing a cashmere roll-neck, a wool skirt, thick tights and boots. She hadn’t bothered checking the weather forecast before choosing her outfit. It was the north of Scotland. It had no business being this hot in October.
She cracked open her window, shooting a look at Phil, who preferred his environments hermetically sealed, but his attention was on the road and the traffic lights they were approaching.
In fifteen minutes they’d be turning into the layby and Phil would be saying, ‘Well, here we are, then!’ – all bright and breezy and stating the bloody obvious. Launching into his It’s going to be fine routine. Wishing her luck. Probably making a bad joke about death by soufflé. And then off he’d go to exchange pleasantries with whatever member of the team from Inverurie CID had been detailed to pick him up, while she scooted over from the passenger seat to the driver’s.
The words Don’t cock it up, Claire would never pass his lips.
They wouldn’t have to. They’d been unspoken in the spaces between their desultory conversations all the way from the Holiday Inn. She shot another look at him. Phil always drove like he was sitting a test, frowning at the road ahead, anticipating problems, pulling out to give pedestrians and animals space even when they were on the pavement. The perfect gentleman.
She knew he was wondering whether he’d done the right thing; whether in giving Claire another chance he was letting John down.
She tried to concentrate on the scenery. God, but it was beautiful. The sky was blue blue blue, the canopies of the trees on fire with all the colours of autumn – gold and copper and bronze and bright lemon yellow. There were so many deciduous trees, little puffy things on the slopes of the hills and great big majestic ones arching over the road. What were they? Oak, beech, sycamore? All of the above?
If nothing else, maybe this job would give her a chance to improve her tree identification skills. She’d expected it to be all conifers. Conifers and scrubby bog and grim hovels. Rural deprivation amidst the beautiful wild scenery. But this was Royal Deeside, after all. The target’s stately pile was a hop, skip and a jump from the Queen’s favourite holiday home at Balmoral. If she’d stopped to think about it for five minutes she might have anticipated that it would be like this.
It reminded her in some ways of the Cotswolds, where her aunt and uncle lived. Lots of impressive stone gates and walls and drives sweeping off into trees. Huge old houses. Cars worth about five years of her salary. The little town they were entering now – Banchory – was every bit as upmarket as Tetbury or Cirencester or Witney. Well-tended greenery and lichen-covered stone walls; neat bungalows and gracious period properties; some sort of monument to a dead Victorian in the form of a miniature tower with polished pink granite columns and the date 1870 on it; pristine bus shelters with the Perspex panels and timetables all intact and ungraffitied; a park overlooked by a row of imposing Victorian houses set up on a bank above the road.
The main street had lots of smart-looking independent shops. Taylor’s of Banchory (‘Complete House Furnishers’ proclaimed the signage) looked like the kind of establishment Grannie would like. As did that little café with the home-baked bread in a basket in the window. Even the ‘bar lounge’ was housed in a lovely old white-painted building with a cute stone turret on the side of it.
‘You okay?’ said Phil.
‘Yeah yeah. Fine.’
‘Well don’t relax too much.’ As if he didn’t know it was taking all she had not to beg him to stop, to turn around, to take her back to the Holiday Inn. ‘He’s going to expect you to be nervous. It’s a job interview, after all.’
‘That’s going to be my angle, certainly, if I can’t answer whatever culinary starters for ten he’s going to throw at me.’ She attempted a chuckle.
If?
The team at Inverurie probably had a sweepstake going on how she was going to crash and burn. She was determined that Bottles it wouldn’t take the pot – and so, it seemed, was Phil, which was probably why he’d persuaded the DCI to let him drive her from Aberdeen to within spitting distance of her destination. He probably thought she needed her nanny to hold her hand.
But whoever had Fucks up the interview could be onto a winner.
She glanced down at the file open on her lap. She’d been pretending to read it, trying to read it, but her brain wouldn’t cooperate.
Now, already, they were through the main drag and back in ladies-who-lunch territory; glimpses of high gables and private tennis courts and what an estate agent would describe as ‘extensive grounds’, places that would need gardeners and cleaners and someone to polish the silver. The comparison with the Cotswolds, though, wasn’t really apt – everything was on a much grander and, yes, more intimidating scale. No crumbly honey-coloured limestone here. The houses were made of pink and grey granite that looked like it would withstand a nuclear blast. Even the cottages were imposing, with stern-looking stone frontages and dark slate roofs. And as the road twisted and turned through the trees you got the odd glimpse across a stubbly yellow field to the hills and the wilderness beyond, just to remind you that this was actually Scotland.
She remembered reading somewhere that Tolkien had based the hobbits’ Shire on the Cotswolds: a pastoral idyll, a cosy contrast to all the terrifying places they had to travel to on their adventures. There wasn’t anything cosy about Aberdeenshire. Okay so there was wealth here, all the comforts you could buy with a bit of money... But forget hobbits. She could much more readily imagine a direwolf loping down from the forest to prowl these posh gardens.
‘Beyond the wall isn’t quite what I’d expected,’ she said.
‘Wait till you meet the wildlings.’ Phil was a big Game of Thrones fan. He nodded at a little lodge house set alongside high stone pillars. ‘Rich pickings, eh?’
‘Evidently.’ She looked back down at the file open on her lap, and the photograph of Hector Forbes smiling up at her.
She hoped he liked soufflés.
Claire had had a crash course in domesticity from Jennifer. She hadn’t been what you’d call an A-star pupil, but thanks to Jennifer’s endless patience she now had three dishes in her repertoire: salmon, boiled potatoes and peas; lentil soup; and cheese soufflé. Jennifer said everyone thought only expert cooks could get soufflés right, but they were actually easy when you knew how.
Easy wasn’t the word Claire would have used.
Jennifer had shown her how to make a whole range of dishes, amidst much hilarity in that beautiful sleek kitchen with its fancy oven and wall-to-wall scary gadgets, but those three were the only ones in which Claire had achieved a
ny level of competence. Even then it was hit or miss whether she managed to burn the soup or undercook the potatoes or end up with strange, brittle little bricks that looked and tasted nothing like cheese soufflés.
For the ‘dish of her choice’, she would probably have to attempt the soufflés. As Jennifer had pointed out, they might not have salmon or lentils, but they were bound to have eggs, cheese, flour and butter. The crucial thing was to adjust the cooking time depending on what size of ramekin was available. Twenty-two, eighteen and fifteen minutes for diameters of twelve, eleven and ten centimetres, respectively. Oven temperature...
From her skirt pocket, she fished the crib note on which she’d jotted down the basics of the recipe. She’d noted all the ingredients, and the quantities of each. But no oven temperature.
Damn.
She put it back in her pocket and looked down again at Hector Forbes. She had an idea, of course, of what he was going to be like, from a combination of what DCI Stewart and Phil had told her and TV portrayals of upper class twits. In her head, he was a disturbing cross between Bertie Wooster and Hannibal Lecter. A charmingly bumbling upper class psychopath into whose clutches she was willingly putting herself, a failing undercover officer he was probably going to see right through and –
And what? What would he do if he rumbled her? She knew she’d got off lightly with the Bristows. She was unlikely to be so lucky a second time.
Early that morning, DCI Stewart had called her with some last-minute unsolicited advice. ‘Don’t pump him for information at this stage – he’s not stupid.’ Did he think she wasn’t even across the basics? ‘And be careful around the loon.’
‘The what?’
‘The boy. The brother. He’s slee, that one.’
Was he doing this deliberately? ‘He’s what?’
‘A sly bugger.’
‘Okay.’ She thought she could just about deal with a sly sixteen-year-old.
She looked at her watch. Just five minutes now to the layby. The scenery was becoming ever more gorgeous the further they travelled up the valley – more hills, more trees, fewer houses.
‘Campbell’s probably right about this guy, you know,’ said Phil suddenly, as if he’d been following her train of thought. ‘You need to assume he is, at any event. You need to watch yourself.’
‘Oh, really? And here was I looking forward to a nice day out in the country.’
Phil looked at her. ‘You’ll be fine.’ And two minutes later, ‘Here we are, then!’
The layby: chosen, it seemed, because it was well screened from the road by a little mini-copse of trees and shrubs.
Mirror, signal, manoeuvre, and then he was saying, ‘And I’ll take that file.’
Oh God. She hadn’t even thought of that. What if she’d left the file on the passenger seat, and when Hector Forbes was showing her to her car he’d glanced in and seen his own photograph staring back at him, clipped to a Police Scotland file?
Oh God.
‘You need to be careful,’ Phil said sudden urgency. ‘Really, Claire, you need to watch yourself. Please.’
She wanted to scream at him, like a child: ‘Don’t make me dooooo this!’
Sometimes she still felt like that silly little girl who’d been obsessed with foiling crime. The caped crusader of Wool House Road. While her friends had been swapping rainbow bracelets and obsessing about how it might be possible to keep a pony in Islington, Claire had been watching the street with binoculars in the hope of seeing a crime unfold that she could foil; or making Mum take her round the shops, not because she wanted to buy toys or clothes but to look for shoplifters. On seaside holidays, she had combed the beaches for smuggled drugs and dead bodies, even as a teenager, although by that time she’d been more into crime series box sets and the local Neighbourhood Watch. She and Mr Vassilis from the ground-floor flat had set up cameras outside the garages after spray-painted obscenities had kept appearing on the garage doors. She still remembered the thrill of playing the footage back at Mr Vassilis’ kitchen table, and almost choking on her Blue Riband when three yobs had swaggered into shot, jeans hanging off their narrow arses, spray-cans in hand. They had pled guilty and got off with cautions, but still. The graffiti-ing had stopped dead.
She had always wanted to be a police officer. She had always wanted to go after the bad ’uns, as Mr Vassilis had called them, and make the world a safer, better place for nice ordinary people. And then after what had happened in sixth form – after what had happened to Dawn... Getting into the police force, becoming a UC, was something she had channelled all her energy into.
All her remorse.
All her guilt.
She didn’t have any other skills. Any other interests or obsessions. She didn’t have a partner or kids or a circle of friends – what effective UC ever made a success, really, of their private life? And Claire had made a conscious decision not to even try. The job, for her, was all-consuming, all-important, all-encompassing.
She had nothing, if she didn’t have this.
3
Karen turned the corner, heading for the stairs, hoping Susie and Damian hadn’t seen her. Susie was giggling, one hand carrying an over-full mug, the other hooked into the lapel of Damian’s blazer. She might as well have hung a sign on him: Forget it, girls, he’s mine.
Pathetic.
The two of them had had a ‘study’ period together in the prefects’ room, which was kitted out with comfy modular couches and cushions and a miniature kitchen. The sixth year room just had a manky old kettle and saggy chairs that were rejects from the staff room and had probably had disgusting arses like Mr McDonald’s sweating and farting and who knew what into them.
‘Karen, wait wait wait!’ screamed Susie.
So she had to stop and turn and look at them, Golden Boy and Golden (although out of a bottle) Girl. Everyone loved Susie and a high percentage of people loved Damian.
‘How’d it go?’ Susie dropped her voice, trying to be all discreet as a bunch of third years went past.
‘I haven’t been suspended yet, if that’s what you mean.’
‘What did she say?’
‘I’m “letting myself down”, apparently.’
Damian had that Oh how awful expression on his face that meant he was trying not to smile.
‘And she’s putting it on you,’ Karen snapped.
The smile broke through.
‘Oh God,’ said Susie, slurping tea. ‘How?’
Yep, never mind that Karen was one incident of ‘truculence’ away from suspension. The bad-mouthing of darling Damian was the worrying thing here.
‘I think just generally turning me to the dark side.’
‘That’s so unfair.’ Susie pouted her rosebud lips. ‘Mrs Harvey has really got it in for you.’ And yes, she was talking to Damian, not Karen. ‘For some reason.’
‘It’s inexplicable,’ said Damian.
Sometimes she secretly wondered whether Damian really was right for head boy. Okay so people always had gone to him with their problems – for some reason – and that was kind of what a head boy was for, but when you did, it wasn’t like he’d necessarily help you. It wasn’t like he’d be all sympathetic and let you talk it out. He could be a real bastard and actually make you feel a whole lot worse.
So now when she said, ‘It’s pretty much all gone to shit,’ she wasn’t surprised when he just raised his eyebrows and said, ‘And that’s all down to Mrs Harvey, is it?’
‘She’s moving the goalposts. How is doing nothing wrong except maybe getting on Mr MacDonald’s tits classified as not showing an improvement in my behaviour?’
‘Taking the rat breakout as baseline?’
She nodded.
‘But presumably you were able to trump her no improvement in behaviour with I’ve got PTSD, you know?’
Karen wanted to tell him to piss off, but suddenly she couldn’t speak. It wasn’t like she wanted to have PTSD. It wasn’t like she could help it. Then, like the gods had just g
rabbed another big handful of salt, she spotted her little sister Mollie – the embarrassing bowl-cut hair was hard to miss – and her friend Cat McAllister trying to hide behind people further down the corridor. Cat had been in love with Damian like forever, and now Mollie claimed she was too, and the two of them ran about the school at break and lunchtime and between classes looking for him. They were basically stalkers but naturally there were no repercussions for dear little Mollie. Everyone thought it was cute.
‘Aw, Karen –’ Susie reached out to touch her arm. Susie thought she understood what Karen was going through because she had also supposedly got PTSD and had to go to counselling, but of course Susie had ‘dealt with it all so well’ and seemed to have appointed herself as Karen’s shoulder to cry on, but Karen couldn’t handle it, she couldn’t handle perfect Susie right now and before she could stop herself the words ‘Fuck off, Susie!’ were coming out of her mouth and Susie was flinching back as if Karen had slapped her.
She ran.
She ran along the corridor and down the stairs and across Middle Quad and through into Lower and up all the stairs to the top floor where the music room was. And all the way, as she passed people giving her looks and giggling and Josh Turner calling out after her ‘Run, Sicko, run!’ she was thinking how much she hated Glencoil.
Josh Turner was an arsehole.
It was Kirsty Brown who’d started the whole Karen the Sicko thing, just because Karen had been watching a clip of cows in a slaughterhouse – it wasn’t like she wanted to watch it but she felt she should? – and Kirsty had said, ‘That’s sick’ and then of course ‘Karen the Sicko’ had been the next thing because her name was DeCicco, as if Karen wasn’t bad enough – thanks a lot, Mum – and Josh had been one of the ones who’d latched onto it and started calling her Sicko.
