by Jane Renshaw
In the Terrace Room, the younger ones swarmed round her when she appeared with the trolley, and the man who’d had Lizzie on his shoulders shouted: ‘Stop attacking the hand that feeds you, you little animals!’
Hector lifted the lid off the massive pot of hot chocolate and started ladling it into mugs while Claire put the plates of buns onto the table and told the kids to help themselves to a plate and a paper napkin. The adults were standing around chatting or sitting by the fire.
Damian soon appeared with the second trolley, and within ten minutes everyone had been served. The noise level was horrendous.
Hector handed her a mug, then offered her the bowls of chocolate. ‘I recommend the dark.’ There was a crude badge, she saw, pinned to the lapel of his tweed jacket with what looked like a very happy, very pink bear scribbled on it. The greedy pig badge, she realised.
She dropped some squares into the mug. It smelt amazing, the mug pleasantly hot in her hands.
Cat sidled between them and took a chocolate square from the bowl. ‘Hector, can you please talk to Mum and Dad? No one else thinks moving to Harris is a good idea except them. And they’re clearly deluded.’
‘Clearly. But it’s not my place to interfere, Cat. Sorry.’
Cat huffed and ran across the room to where Mollie and another girl were standing, whispering and casting black looks over at the two pretty teenage girls who were talking to Damian. It seemed rather an intense conversation. Damian looked up at that moment and caught Claire’s eye. He raised his eyebrows and inclined his head slightly. As she approached: ‘Claire, this is Anna Tait... and Susie Robertson. Claire Colley, our new housekeeper.’
‘Hi!’ said Anna, wide-eyed.
‘I love the Christmasiness,’ said Susie, waving a hand round the room. ‘It’s goat!’
‘Um... thanks?’
‘Greatest of all time,’ translated Anna. ‘As opposed to farmyardy.’ She giggled.
‘Victorian Christmas vibe,’ Susie continued approvingly, still looking about her. ‘You’ve nailed it.’
‘Greatly helped by the fact that most of the decorations do actually seem to be Victorian. But I’m glad someone appreciates the effort.’ Claire had gone all out preparing the room. Damian had located a box of decorations in one of the attics and helped her string up old-fashioned paper friezes with smiling cherubs and animated Christmas puddings and spoons with faces and turkeys dressed in colourful waistcoats. And she’d added throws to the sofas and armchairs, and put a big arrangement of greenery on top of the piano along with some pottery snowmen and assorted animals dressed in Edwardian coats and hats.
‘We appreciate the effort,’ said Damian. ‘If not the results.’
‘Damian!’ squealed Anna.
Wordlessly, he indicated a ceramic nativity scene Claire had placed on a windowsill, centred on an incredibly unprepossessing baby Jesus and a simpering, slightly cross-eyed Mary. Anna shrugged a concession and took a bite of her cinnamon bun.
‘We’ve got a bit of a problem...’ Damian lowered his voice. ‘...with Karen. As usual.’
‘Ah.’
‘That’s her mum over there,’ whispered Susie. ‘Mrs Mair.’ So the enthusiastic teacher was Karen’s mum. ‘She’s been asking us some rather awkward questions. About whether we’ve had contact with Karen.’
‘We had to tell her that Karen has pretty much fallen out with all of us,’ added Anna. ‘Although we didn’t tell her about the stealing and stuff, obvs.’
Damian raised his eyebrows. ‘The “and stuff” refers to the fact that Anna, Susie and Eve accompanied Karen today on a fun festive excursion into Aberdeen to the residence of “Benny the fence”, where they retrieved – in other words, stole back – the items Karen stole from here.’
‘We didn’t know what she was intending until we were half way there,’ Susie said defensively. ‘And we could hardly leave her to do it herself. Benny almost caught us as it was.’
‘Although he was hardly much of a threat,’ said Anna through a mouthful of bun. ‘It’s not like the four of us couldn’t have overpowered him, no problem. I’ve brought the stuff, by the way. I left it in a bag in the Silver Room. Apart from Wilkins. I think Karen must still have him. She stormed out of the car after Susie suggested that being a thief maybe wasn’t a morally acceptable life choice.’
Claire, feeling a bit dazed, shook her head. ‘Benny the fence!’
‘I know!’ Anna crowed in delight. ‘His real name’s probably something like Rupert!’
‘Do you think you could try talking to her again tomorrow?’ said Damian. ‘I know it’s Christmas Day, but we’re worried that Benny could have recognised Karen and might tip off Ade. She needs to get out of there asap, but she’s not going to listen to any of us.’
She couldn’t go and see Karen. By tomorrow, Claire would be gone, and she’d never see any of them again. But she would pass all this on to Phil. Surely, in his Baz persona, he could sort out Karen’s mess?
Because it really was a mess. Karen was a mess. She could see now, all too clearly, that there was something frantic and very Dawn-like about the way Karen was rushing headlong into one bad situation after another. But the girl had been way down her list of priorities.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ was all she said.
Anna and Susie beamed at her.
‘Thanks, Claire,’ said Damian.
‘You’re the best!’ added Anna.
Oh God.
‘Five minute warning,’ said Karen’s mum. ‘Finish up the grub and then we’ll give Away in a Manger a whirl.’
The kids arranged themselves around the piano. Lizzie squirmed in her mother’s arms, red-faced, shouting, ‘I want to sing! I want to sing!’
‘You can’t sing, you’re rubbish,’ said the cherubic girl.
‘Ruth!’ said Fiona.
‘Well, she is! She ruins it for everyone!’
Lizzie threw back her head and howled.
‘See?’ demanded Ruth.
Fiona shot a despairing look at the big man who was presumably her husband. He took Lizzie from her as Hector said, ‘Take her upstairs if you like. There’s a fire in the library.’
The husband, without looking at or acknowledging Hector, left the room with the squalling little girl in his arms.
‘There’s always at least one who kicks off,’ said Damian in a low voice, his eyes alight with amusement, as if he wasn’t a kid himself, as if he’d never been one – and in fact Claire couldn’t imagine him having a tantrum. At Lizzie’s age, he’d probably have presented a reasoned argument outlining his objections.
Fiona was now standing in the far corner of the room, on the other side of the big fireplace, as far from Hector as it was possible to get. He had his back to her, watching the singers.
And now he was turning and smiling at Claire, and coming over to hook an arm around Damian’s shoulders. ‘The aversion therapy doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect.’
‘No. Quite the opposite,’ said Damian. ‘Thanks for that.’
‘My suggested strategy to discourage the groupies,’ Hector muttered to Claire, looking pointedly towards the singers, ‘who seem to be multiplying.’ Cat, Mollie and another girl had positioned themselves at the far end of the semicircle of kids, next to the piano, apparently with the primary purpose of staring at Damian. ‘Aversion therapy: expose the sufferer simultaneously to the problematic stimulus and something unpleasant.’ He patted Damian’s chest. ‘Last year’s Christmas present from Mrs Mac.’
‘What is that on the front? It looks like...’
‘Yep.’ Damian squinted down at it. ‘No one has liked to ask Mrs Mac what it is, but my money’s on some kind of Christmas pudding rather than a jobbie.’
‘But Christmas puddings are round.’
‘Yule log?’ suggested Hector.
‘Whatever,’ said Damian. ‘The point is that the effect, contrary to that intended, has been to make me seem like a lovely person who wears hideous knit
wear out of consideration for the person responsible.’ He held up his arms. ‘Look at the sleeves.’
The left sleeve was tight around his arm, the right gaping wide.
Hector was laughing. ‘Yes, I really didn’t think it through, did I? Sorry about that.’ He gave the Christmas turd a final pat and moved on, still chuckling to himself.
‘He’s hyper,’ Damian remarked. ‘Possibly hoping against hope that Santa will decide he’s been good and leave him a tangerine.’
Claire attempted a smile.
40
There was an odd petrolly smell, and something scratchy against her face. Karen managed to open her eyes. She managed to pull her arms out of whatever was squashing them against her body and half sit up.
It was dark, apart from a dull orange glow a few feet away.
She seemed to be in a sleeping bag.
A sleeping bag on a big mound of grass clippings, like the mound behind the shed at primary school where Mr Cope the gardener used to dump the cut grass and they’d all jump in it and throw it at each other. She could feel the dry grass under her palms and smell its sweet mustiness.
Where was she?
The air was cool – not cold, not warm.
‘Hello?’ she said.
She should get up and work out where she was.
But her head felt weird, as if it was being pushed back down again by an invisible hand on her forehead. She closed her eyes and let herself fall back, and back and back, into the dark.
◆◆◆
Claire sat up in bed and looked at the digital display on her alarm clock for the umpteenth time. 1:06. He’d probably be there by now, at Drumdargie Castle, disabling the alarm system, maybe, while Campbell Stewart and the team waited, concealed in the trees, ready to spring the trap once he’d actually entered the building and had starting removing valuables.
There was nothing she could do about it now.
She lay back down and closed her eyes.
She lay on her right side.
She turned to lie on her front.
After she’d returned here from the House, she’d called Grannie and told her what she’d done, and Grannie had listened while she’d cried, and told her she was proud of her. ‘You’ve done the right thing, Claire. I knew you would, in the end. Well done, darling. Well done.’
Well done.
Claire sat up.
And then she was clicking on the light, she was pulling on her clothes haphazardly, she was running, slipping down the stairs in her stocking feet, detouring into the loo for a quick pee and then she was pulling on her boots, her coat, grabbing a torch, and she was out into the freezing night air and crunching through the snow on the path to the House, keys to one of the Land Rovers jangling in her jacket pocket.
There was a moon now, high in the sky, almost full, so she hardly needed her torch.
A hunter’s moon, Hector would probably have told her, his lips quirking in that annoying half-smile.
◆◆◆
There was no time to spare for finesse. She turned off the public road onto the long drive at Drumdargie, her headlights making a tunnel of light under the trees that loomed out of the dark on either side. There were tyre tracks. At least one vehicle had been along here since it last snowed – but when had it last snowed?
And what did it matter?
She accelerated out of the trees, across the open expanse towards the castle.
In the eery cast of the moonlight, it looked even more sinister. No lights on in the windows, no vehicles parked outside, but that didn’t mean anything. She drove straight up to the door. She would claim to her colleagues that she had misunderstood why Hector was coming here – she now realised that he was merely checking on the place for Perdita and Max – and here she was to clear up the mess she’d created. No subterfuge required.
She jumped down from the Land Rover and walked briskly to the oak door and banged on it. There was enough moonlight to see forms and shapes by. Whoever was watching the castle could probably pick her out, recognise her as DC Castleford.
‘Hector! Hector, it’s me!’
She expected someone to come running, at this point – from the trees over there, maybe – but the night was perfectly still. She might have been alone, standing at the door of this grim old castle, under the night sky and the frosty stars.
But she knew she wasn’t alone.
She banged again on the door.
And now it came suddenly open, and Hector, dressed all in black, was raising his eyebrows at her as if she was a guest who had inconveniently arrived unannounced; as if she was the one with explaining to do.
‘They know you’re here,’ she gulped, finding it suddenly hard to breathe, to get her words out. ‘Campbell Stewart knows.’
He grabbed her; pulled her inside, shut the door, and turned the huge old key in the lock. Thunk.
She was trembling. Shaking. ‘I’m sorry,’ she found herself saying.
‘Well, there’s really no need to apologise, but I am a bit busy just at the moment – so perhaps you could briefly summarise the situation? Are they out there now?’
She nodded. ‘I think so. I think they must be waiting for you to leave with... with whatever it is you’re thinking of taking... You have to come with me now, and we’ll talk to DCI Stewart, and I’ll explain to him that I made a mistake.’
In the gloom of the hall, she felt his gaze on her. ‘You would do that? You’d be throwing away your whole career.’
She took a long breath. ‘I don’t have a career – not in the police. Not any more.’
She could tell he was smiling. ‘If you’re thinking of giving it all up for housekeeping, you should probably think again.’
How could he joke? ‘We have to go and –’
He shook his head.
‘Hector –’
‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate the sacrifice. But I’m afraid there are – complications.’
‘What “complications”? What other choice do you have? They’re out there, you can’t get away!’
‘Want a bet?’ She could still hear the smile in his voice. ‘What you’re going to do now is leave. Get back in the Land Rover and go. All they’ll have on us is that a Pitfourie Estate vehicle rolled up here in the dead of night. And that’s hardly a crime. With any luck, they might not have seen you clearly enough to identify you. And now if you’ll excuse me, as I said, I am a little busy.’
Claire gaped.
He turned and walked away from her across the hall into the shadows.
‘Hector!’ She ran after him. ‘You can’t expect me to – to just leave, and let you... strip the place of its valuables! I’m still a police officer!’
He started up the wide spiral staircase. ‘So arrest me, then.’
Oh God.
She just stood, watching him disappear round the bend in the staircase, a shadowy, ghostly figure in the wash of moonlight that was slanting down the steps from a narrow window. His feet made surprisingly little sound on the stone as he broke into a run. Maybe he was wearing some sort of specialist footwear designed for... criminals? Burglars?
She choked on a hysterical gulp of laughter, and ran up the stairs after him, just in time to see him leave the stairwell on the second floor. She hurried after him into the long gallery, flooded with moonlight so that everything was shades of grey and black – the old coffers against the walls, the huge paintings in their uncompromisingly modern frames...
The man lying on the polished wooden floor.
She felt herself grabbed, suddenly, from behind, and a hand came across her mouth.
She bit it.
He spun her to face him, taking her shoulders in his hands. ‘Yes, it’s the Twat and he’s dead, I’m afraid.’
She broke his hold by chopping up with her arms, as she’d been trained to do, and went for an elbow strike to his neck, but he easily dodged it and stepped back out of range.
He was between Claire and the stairs. She couldn’t
get past him. She was trapped here, the shadowed walls seeming to close in on her –
Think think think!
These old castles usually had more than one staircase, didn’t they?
She turned into the shadows and ran.
41
She jumped over Weber’s body and pelted off down the length of the eery moonlit gallery, arms pumping, using the explosive power of her long leg muscles like an athlete coming out of the blocks. She’d always been a great sprinter – she’d competed at university level – and she knew he wouldn’t catch her.
But, unbelievably, she heard him behind her, she felt his grasp on her arm and, off balance, she hit the floor, hard, and he was on top of her, and he was too strong –
‘My God, you can move,’ he said lightly, and she could see his chest rise and fall above her. ‘I didn’t kill him. He’s been dead at least a few hours.’ And he stood, and backed away from her, hands held out to his sides. ‘But if you don’t believe me, by all means go running to Campbell. I don’t think I have it in me to catch you a second time.’
She pushed herself to her feet, standing poised, staring at him.
All around them, the shadows seemed to hold their breath.
‘Strangled,’ he said.
‘You’re expecting me to believe – that someone else – just happened to break in and... and kill him, on the very night you decide to burgle the place?’
‘Talk about bad timing.’
She was breathing harder than he was. ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’
He stepped back further, gesturing politely. ‘Take a look if you like.’ And as he followed her back down the gallery, in and out of the stripes of moonlight cast by the windows: ‘I have a torch, if you’d like to...’
She snatched it from him. It was, as she’d known it would be, a very effective torch, with a beam you could focus or widen. She ran its light over the body of Max Weber, her hand shaking slightly, sending the beam of light juddering across the pale face, the line of shoulder, hip, feet. He was turned partly on his side, as if in the recovery position or asleep, his cheek against the dark polished oak boards of the ancient floor. There was no blood.
