by Jane Renshaw
‘Em,’ she said. ‘Damian?’
He opened his eyes.
‘Okay, Ade’s waiting for me so I need to be quick. This is important.’
Ade was outside in the van with the engine running, and if she wasn’t quick there was a chance he might decide to come in after her and have a go at Damian. He was in a bad mood after Mum and Bill turning up at Kinty, even though she’d taken his side and refused to go home with them.
Damian pushed himself up and bent his knees to the side to sit, still under the rug. ‘Are you going to deck me?’
‘Yeah, tempting.’
Actually with his hair all sticking up and that slightly out-of-it expression, to go off on one at him would have been like kicking a puppy. And she wasn’t too surprised when the door opened behind her and Hector was saying, ‘Everything all right here?’ and looking at Damian in that way he had sometimes, like he was scared of what he might find, like Damian might have spontaneously combusted.
‘Fine,’ Karen sighed.
‘Yep,’ said Damian, and put a hand through his hair.
When Hector had gone, she sat on a chair and took out the rescue phone, still in the freezer bag, and put it down on the little table between the chair and the sofa. ‘I need you to take this to the police and tell them you found it. They’ll take your fingerprints, so you’ll have to say you were wearing gloves and that’s why they aren’t on it. Mine are, obviously, but I’m not in the database, so it doesn’t matter.’
‘Am I still asleep? Is this one of those dreams where nothing makes the slightest bit of sense?’
‘It’s got a text from Chimp on it.’
He blinked at her.
‘Sent on the day he died. Saying OK see you at 6 at boathouse. And no one came forward to say they met him there, right? Probably because they murdered him.’
‘But – Christ, Karen!’
‘Yeah.’ She grimaced. ‘It’s the only thing on there. Everything must have been deleted, all the messages and contacts, just after the person arranged to meet Chimp, which is obviously really suss. And that message must have just come in as he switched off the phone for the last time, and he never noticed it. Six o’clock – that’s after Chimp was last seen alive.’
‘Where did you actually find it?’
Dammit. Even half asleep and trying to pretend having a bit of his leg missing wasn’t a big deal, he was like a guided missile, homing in on the one thing you didn’t want him to.
‘In the ditch by the drive,’ she said. That would make sense to the police – that the murderer had dumped it right after murdering Chimp, as he made his getaway up the drive.
After a long silence, in which the fire in the stove crackled and Karen tactfully did not look at the blanket covering his legs:
‘You first met Ade in the boathouse, didn’t you?’
God!
‘What’s that got to do with it? The point here is that it’s really important evidence, and obviously I can’t hand it in. It’s too much of a coincidence that I found the body and then I found a phone with a message from Chimp on it.’ The real reason she couldn’t hand it in, of course, was that the police might not believe her when she lied to them about where she’d found it, and they might start looking at the whole Kinty group.
‘You need to hand it in yourself. You need to tell the police the truth.’
‘Have you even been listening?’
‘If they –’
‘God, Damian! Either you do this, or I’ll get Ade to!’
‘Does Ade know you’ve found the phone?’
‘No, but he’ll have to, if you don’t do this.’ That shut him up. ‘You owe me. You owe me for clyping to Mum and Bill about Ade, when you were fucking sworn to secrecy! You’ve got to do this!’
She expected him to argue, but all he said was, ‘All right.’
25
Claire had used the last of the light to do a floundering, skidding run in a circuit past the pond, around the House and back via a forest track. Phil had called as she was approaching Pond Cottage.
‘I can’t talk now. But everything’s fine,’ she had insisted.
‘Sure about that?’
‘Yep.’
‘Claire –’
‘I’m out on a run. I can’t talk.’
After a bath and a sketchy meal, she lay on the sofa at Pond Cottage with the throw over her, staring into the fire. She should call Phil back and tell him what had happened. She couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t been the one to initiate that kiss. Yes, he’d made the approach, but she had kissed him.
She’d never felt such an intense attraction to anyone. Part of it was physical, of course – he was what Mum would call a fine physical specimen – but it was much more than that. It was the way they just seemed to click, the way their minds seemed to work in the same way and –
And all that was irrelevant, because nothing more was going to happen between them. The problem she had to face was the effect her feelings for this man – for the target – were having on her attitude to the job. On her loyalties, to the extent that...
Yes, she had to face it.
To the extent that she didn’t want to find any evidence against him.
She had lost it. She had totally lost it.
She sat up, stretching the muscles in her arms. She needed to stop wallowing and do something half useful. She could do a proper, in-depth, looking-for-disturbed-floorboards search of the bedrooms.
She was in the kitchen, heading for the back hall and the stairs, when the doorbell rang.
At eight o’clock in the evening, way out here?
She went to the window and edged the curtain aside.
Oh Godddd!
Hector. Standing at the door holding what she immediately recognised as a massive box of Hotel Chocolat chocolates. The Chocolatier’s Table, it was called. She knew how much it cost because she, Gabby and David pooled resources every Christmas to get one for Mum and Dad. And then ate most of them themselves.
She dropped the curtain back in place. She couldn’t not answer. He must know she was in here. Where else would she be?
‘A peace offering,’ he said when she opened the door, standing there holding the box of chocolates almost shyly. But he seemed to fill the doorway with his presence, making the whole place feel different, charged, like when a particularly good actor came on stage and the whole audience held its collective breath.
Maybe the comparison was apt. He was certainly playing his part to perfection. He was wearing an old waxed coat that looked as if it was the veteran of many years out in the elements. The archetypal winterwear for the archetypal country gentleman.
She felt herself flushing. ‘Thank you. But... You didn’t need to do that.’ She took the box from him and turned it over to examine the pictures of all the chocolates on the back. She stepped back so he could come in, focusing on the Raspberry Pannacotta and Champagne Truffle.
They were standing too close.
She looked up at him.
He was looking at her with those soft eyes...
‘Are you all right?’ His voice was low and gentle, like he was speaking to a hurt child.
She nodded.
‘I don’t think you are.’
She opened her mouth to protest, but nothing came out. And then she was in his arms, breathing in the cold, mineral smell of snowy air off his coat, pressing her face into his shoulder and letting him hold her, letting him stroke her back, murmur soothing words in her ear, and she felt all the heaviness leave her body as she realised that she was still holding on to the box of chocolates, that it was squashed between them. Laughing shakily, she shoved it in the direction of the hall table.
He took it from her. ‘Can you bear to let go?’
She let go, and he chucked the box onto the floor as she twined her arms round his neck and kissed him, hard, not caring that this was such a bad idea, not caring that he was potentially a murderer, potentially a psychopath, not caring about anyt
hing other than her need for him, thrumming through her body, flooding her mind, sweeping away all rational thought.
At last, he pulled away; smiled into her eyes. ‘I came to apologise for the sexual harassment.’
‘And how’s that working for you?’
‘Rather better than expected.’
With mock politeness, she said, ‘Can I take your coat?’
‘Thank you, yes.’
◆◆◆
It was dark, and he wasn’t there.
Just an empty space in the bed next to her.
‘No,’ she said, rolling over into the space, pressing her nose and mouth to the cold pillow – but maybe that had been a dream, because next thing she knew she was properly awake and he was there, sleeping, his face turned towards her on that same pillow.
He was there.
And all she could do was lie and look at him.
She couldn’t feel regret. She couldn’t feel guilt. She couldn’t feel anything but happiness as she studied him in the faint light of the moon: the relaxed mouth, the tousled hair, the sweep of dark eyelashes on shadowed cheek.
He was a good man.
He was a good man.
He had to be, or she was lost.
What had happened to her this night, in this bed... She hadn’t imagined that such extremes of pleasure existed. Way out beyond the limits of the known Universe.
Oh.
My.
God.
Before him, she had slept with only two men: her university boyfriend and a colleague she’d gone out with for a while when she’d been doing her stint in uniform. She had known both men as friends for more than a year before she’d fallen in love with them – she had thought at the time that she’d fallen in love with them – and they’d started long-term relationships. It was a hopelessly old-fashioned quirk of hers, much derided by Gabby, that she couldn’t bring herself to have sex with someone she didn’t love.
She supposed it was about losing control. If she was going to put herself, at her most vulnerable, into the hands of another human being, show them the real person under the chameleon layers, she had to know them. She had to love them. She had to trust them.
And she didn’t know him, she didn’t love him, and she didn’t trust him.
He wasn’t a good man.
How could he be?
What man art thou?
She’d Googled it and discovered that it was a quote from Shakespeare. From Romeo and Juliet. Juliet was talking to herself, wishing that Romeo wasn’t a Montague, wasn’t her enemy... And Romeo was eavesdropping in the dark. Romeo, doff thy name, Juliet sighed. And for that name, which is no part of thee, take myself. And Romeo answered: I take thee at thy word. Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptised. Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
And then Juliet challenged him: What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night, so stumblest on my counsel?
But she was probably reading too much into it.
She was probably reading far too much into all of it.
26
When she next woke, the bed really was empty, and the smell of coffee and toast was drifting up the stairs. It was after eight o’clock, but it was still dark outside. She shrugged on her dressing gown.
He was in the kitchen, sitting eating a boiled egg at the table.
She wasn’t used to sharing her early morning space. And seeing him there, making himself at home...
The Chocolatier’s Table was sitting on the dresser.
What had she done?
What was she doing?
What would Grannie say?
She didn’t come into the room, but stood in the back hall and said, ‘I’m going to have a shower.’
‘You need to get in some more supplies. I’ll bring some over from the House later.’
‘I don’t usually have much of a breakfast.’
‘Well, you should. Would you like an egg?’
And he smiled at her, and suddenly she couldn’t speak. All she could do was stand and stare at him, at the breakfast things laid out neatly on the table, everything vivid and bright in the artificial light. The red salt and pepper pots, the white of his shirt, the chestnut highlights in his hair... This was the same kitchen with the same things in it, but it felt like a completely different room – or no, it was like her whole life, her whole way of looking at the world had been skewed –
She dived across the hall and into the bathroom, shut the door and leant back against it, her heart pumping, smiling an idiotic smile. She’d never taken drugs, but she imagined this might be what it was like. Her head felt like it was floating several feet above her body, and everything she looked at made her want to laugh – the big old taps on the bath, the shampoo bottle that said ‘with vitamin E’, as if you were meant to drink the stuff, the little miniature duck hanging off the window catch which she’d never noticed before.
Laugh or cry.
She supposed he’d go off now and do whatever he did with his days – she didn’t want to think about that. All she wanted was for him to stay, to stay with her; she wanted to be with him, to talk to him, to talk to him about nice things, interesting things, funny things; to laugh with him; to touch him and have him touch her.
Everything had changed.
The whole world had changed.
And how ridiculous was that? It was only sex. She wasn’t the kind of woman to fall in love with a man because of good sex. And she hadn’t fallen in love with him, for God’s sake! She didn’t even know him! It was just her brain going haywire because of the situation, the forbidden fruit thing, the thrill of it. The guilt of it.
How could she stay in the police force, after this?
She showered quickly and dressed, and then she had to sit opposite him at the table and drink the coffee he made for her and eat a perfectly cooked, runny-yolked boiled egg and soldiers as he told her about the Jarvies and Aucharblet, perfectly naturally, just as if nothing had happened, as if they were still the two people they’d been yesterday.
‘Balfour Jarvie is my godfather – I had to have one because my mother, being from the Islands, was very religious, but my father insisted on Balfour. His childhood friend and fellow atheist.’ He grinned, taking a gulp of coffee. ‘Not that Balfour advertises the fact. He’s the local MP and it doesn’t do to worry the God-botherers.’
‘I don’t imagine your mother was exactly thrilled about that.’
‘Possibly not. She certainly didn’t appreciate Balfour’s attempts to teach me to shoot – at the age of five.’
‘Oh no, seriously?’
He’d opened his mouth to answer when the phone in her pocket buzzed. She took it through to the sitting room, closing both doors behind her.
DCI Stewart’s voice brought her right back down to earth. ‘Are you okay to talk?’
‘Yes.’
‘What exactly did you do with that tracker?’
‘Um – what?’ She kept her voice just above a whisper.
‘The tracker Phil gave you.’
‘I attached it to – his Land Rover. The unmarked one.’
‘Well that’s strange, because the camera at the gate caught him in that vehicle leaving at 3:43 this morning, with Mick Shepherd, and returning again an hour later, and yet the tracker has been stationary in the courtyard at the House all night.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure... Why are you whispering? Is someone with you?’
Oh God. ‘Hector’s in the kitchen.’ Always best to stick as closely to the truth as possible. ‘He’s brought me some supplies.’
‘Bloody early, given he can’t have got much sleep last night... Is it possible you fixed the tracker to the wrong vehicle?’
Was it? ‘No. It must have fallen off. Or he found it...’
‘Is it possible someone saw you attaching it?’
‘No.’
A huge sigh. ‘Try to locate it – if it’s dropped off, we don’t want him finding it – but don’t attempt r
eattachment. It’s not worth the risk.’
‘Okay.’
‘Concentrate on intel. What about the guys who worked with John? What do they have to say?’
The guys who worked with John? Who was he talking about? Think think think but she couldn’t, all she could think about was last night, and the man sitting at her kitchen table eating toast.
‘Claire?’
‘Yes, sorry, what?’
‘Mick Shepherd and Liam Watson and the others.’
Of course. ‘I’ve spoken to Mick Shepherd – he didn’t have much of use to say.’ Yes he did. He’d pretty much come out and said he thought Chimp had been murdered. ‘Liam Watson is away over Christmas. I’ve met Norrie Hewitt but I haven’t had a chance to talk to him properly.’ At least that was all true.
‘Well, do so asap. And what about the boy? Have you got anything out of him yet?’
‘He’s confirmed he was with Hector on the evening Chimp – John – died.’
‘Well of course he was going to say that! Hector will have told him exactly what to say.’
‘I didn’t get that impression.’
‘No? And what impression have you got of Hector?’
She closed her eyes. ‘I’m reserving judgement.’
He snorted. ‘Talk to the boy about the car accident.’
‘Right, yes.’ And a sensible question had just occurred to her. ‘Do you know the names of the farmer and his wife who were first on the scene?’
‘Jim and Ina Clack.’
‘Helen’s uncle?’
‘Yes, but you can forget that avenue. To get any sort of information out of that man, you’d have to use methods not sanctioned under the Geneva Convention, let alone by Police Scotland.’
When she’d ended the call, she just stood there, looking at the cold hearth.
She was shaking.
She was actually shaking, like a junkie coming down off a high.
They hadn’t slept together. He hadn’t slept next to her all night. He had crept out of her bed and gone off to engage in some sort of criminal activity. Crept back into it. And Claire none the wiser.
Or so he thought.
Back in the kitchen, she asked him, just to see what he would say: ‘Where were you, last night?’
