Hen's Teeth

by Manda Scott

  And a new problem. The hard disk held several hundred megabytes of memory and a lot of it was used. It would take dozens of floppies and several hours to copy it and there was nowhere near enough time to read it all and decide which files were useful and which could be left.

  A pencil torch flickered in the door away to my left. ‘Kellen! Come and see this.’

  I shoved a new disk into the external drive. ‘Bugger off. I’m busy.’

  Lee appeared like an errant poltergeist at my elbow. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘A locked filing cabinet. Can you open it?’

  ‘’Spect so.’ She fiddled with the lock. It made a satisfying chunk and a drawer slid open. ‘Ask and it shall be given.’ A smile in the darkness. Arrogant brat. She began to rifle through the drawers. ‘What else have you got?’

  ‘Goldmine.’ I showed her the HEN disk. ‘Hen equals chicken equals bantam.’

  ‘Oh. That’s nice,’ she said. ‘Want to see where they come from?’

  Utterly arrogant brat.

  A lab is a lab the world over. White, aseptic and boring, unless you enjoy watching mould grow on bits of glass or water drip down a pipette. Personally, I’d rather live my life for real, but some folk enjoy it.

  This lab was like all the others – except that one of the benches was not a real bench. It looked fairly real to the average bystander – white lab-cote top with figures scrawled on in biro, cupboards ranged underneath and a clutter of lab stools around it. Undoubtedly, if I was the average health and safety officer walking past I would have said something useful about the state of the paintwork but very little else. But Lee got there first and shoved her palms under the top, lifting it slightly and sliding it smoothly backwards to reveal a carefully constructed cavity that took up the entire area of the bench. Inside that was a silvered steel cabinet with water pipes running in from one end and an array of dials and lights on the top.

  I stared at it in fascination. ‘What is this?’

  ‘It looks like an incubator to me,’ she said, stating the obvious. ‘Unless there’s something else I haven’t found, there’s only eggs inside and none of them are close to hatching.’

  ‘Is this what we’re after?’

  ‘There’s nothing else worth looking at.’

  ‘Have you taken any eggs?’

  ‘Of course.’ She hefted her rucksack. ‘From the middle of the stack. It’ll be a while before they notice they’re gone.’ She reached over and pulled the false bench top back into place. ‘The rest of the lab is clear.’ She looked up at the clock on the wall. Eleven forty-five. ‘Closing time was almost an hour ago. The streets should be fairly quiet by now. Shall we go?’

  ‘Good idea.’

  We walked back to the computer, which waited patiently for the next instruction.

  I swapped the disks and copied the files, thinking hard. ‘You didn’t find any spare disks?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ Lee was working her way through the filing cabinet. ‘But there are other offices. They probably all have Macs. I could find you some. How many do you need?’

  ‘About three dozen. But there isn’t time even if you find some spares.’ I left the machine to do its work and switched on the modem, checking that the telephone wire at the back was plugged into the wall socket. ‘Can you hack into one of these?’

  ‘Nope. Never tried. Can you?’

  ‘No. But I know a woman who can.’ I pulled the last disk from the drive, opened the communications software that activated the modem and gave access to the hard disk, and then dimmed the screen to black. From a distance, it looked as if the machine was switched off. Risky, but I couldn’t think of any other way.

  The telephone number and extension code were printed on the phone. I found a pen and scribbled both on to the back of my hand, checking it twice before nodding to Lee. ‘OK, partner. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  Two Dobermanns blinked at us sleepily as we slipped out through the main door. The male gave a low, husky cough and wrinkled an upper lip in greeting. They escorted us to the perimeter gates after Lee had found the control box for the pressure alarms and thrown the switch. She locked the main gates behind us and I pushed an arm through to pat the big dog on the head. He wriggled his rump and nudged at my hand with his nose. Friends for life.

  We ran carefully up the fire escape of the old tenement and dismantled the rope belay from the top without intruding on anyone’s reality. If there were people in there, they were all asleep.

  The car was where we had left it. Intact.

  ‘You owe me a tenner,’ said Lee, throwing the rucksacks in the back.

  ‘In that case, you can let me drive,’ I said and nearly touched the door handle. ‘Once you’ve disabled the traps.’

  ‘No traps, partner.’ She smiled and unlocked the door for me. ‘I just switched the plates to Laidlaw’s numbers. His car’s the same as this one. Even the crack-heads wouldn’t mess with him.’

  I looked at the yellow plates glowing dimly in the sodium glare of the street light: L999 SCC.

  SCC. Strathclyde Central Constabulary.

  ‘The arrogant bastard.’

  ‘Quite.’ Lee fished a plastic bag from under the front seats and handed me a screwdriver. ‘Here. There’s a single screw, top and bottom. You take those off. I’ll put the new ones on.’

  It took us less than five minutes to complete the change. The replacement plates were grubby, anonymous and entirely unmemorable.

  Simple is safe.

  I drove slowly back through the deserted streets to the flat.

  Four

  I woke the next morning, alone in the bed, with the duvet wrapped round me like a silkworm’s cocoon. Janine was long gone. Her clothes, which had been piled neatly on the chair when I got into bed, had disappeared and I could hear the noise of the washing machine spinning away in the background. A mug of stone-cold coffee with a skin on it like school custard sat in mute accusation on the bedside table and the sun glared through the gap in the curtains.

  I sat up and stretched experimentally. My body felt as if I had been run over by a joy-rider in a road roller. Muscles I hadn’t used in years panicked and seized solid as I rolled carefully out of bed. Over-stretched joints jagged with incipient arthritis and the palms of my hands ached hotly with sub-clinical rope burn.

  You would think I would know better by my age.

  I collected my dressing gown from the back of the door and made my way through the living room, past the debris of two take-away meals, to the shower. Probes of hot water sought out a selection of cuts and grazes collected during the night and filled them with acid before soothing them out into a dull throb. A gash on my forearm bled freely and I spent several minutes trying to wash my hair left-handed before giving up and sploshing across the bathroom floor to find a waterproof dressing.

  Ten minutes later, with dry hair, clean clothes, a fresh plaster and a body that moved more or less as nature intended, I felt fit to face the rest of the world.

  The rest of the world was not greatly in evidence. I found Janine, eventually, in the bedroom, folding her work clothes with obsessive precision and arranging them with care in the largest of her three suitcases.

  ‘Where’s Caroline?’ I asked.

  ‘Gone to the farm. The horses needed feeding and we weren’t sure if you were going to surface this side of tomorrow. She took the hens with her.’ My lover paused in her folding and looked me in the eye. ‘Before they wrecked anything else.’

  Ominous.

  ‘I left them in a pen,’ I said.

  ‘So I noticed.’ Her eyebrows arced beyond her hairline. ‘I think you forgot to put a lid on it.’

  Ah.

  ‘Have they done a lot of damage?’

  ‘Depends on your point of view.’ She turned round to pull a silk suit from the wardrobe behind her. ‘They trashed most of the floppies and the keyboards are completely glued up with chicken shit.’ She smiled thinly, like a lioness on point. ‘I sup
pose, under the circumstances, we should consider ourselves lucky.’

  I suppose we should. I suppose also that I should ask about insurance. Or offer to pay. Or both.

  Later perhaps. When she’s feeling less aggrieved. Or when she has finished packing. If she’s still here.

  I sat on the bed, hugging my knees up to my chin, and watched my lover empty the contents of her bedside drawer into a small box with an odd sinking sensation somewhere below my diaphragm.

  ‘What’s going on, Jan?’

  She closed the box with exaggerated care, sealing it carefully with two loops of Sellotape before she looked up. ‘Rae’s looking for someone else to share the flat,’ she said carefully.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Rae’s looking for someone . . .’

  ‘Yes. I heard. Are you going?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you tell me why?’

  ‘Because one of us has to do something and since it’s obviously not going to be you, then it has to be me.’

  Really? You don’t come up with lines like that off the top of your head. ‘You can come up with something better than that, surely?’

  ‘All right.’ She put the box down and sat on the floor beside it. ‘When you went to the States,’ she said, ‘you gave me your word that we would talk when you got back. You’re back. I haven’t noticed any burning urgency even to share a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry . . . There hasn’t been time . . .’

  ‘How long have you been home, Kellen?’

  I counted up on my fingers. ‘A fortnight?’

  ‘Ten days,’ she corrected. ‘And ten nights. How many of those have you spent here?’

  ‘I was here last night.’

  ‘You got in after three o’clock this morning, Kellen. It’s not what I’d call a normal night in. And I didn’t hear you say anything.’

  ‘I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘Sure you did.’ She picked up the box and left the room. I followed her out on to the landing, where she added it to a pile that started with her other two suitcases. I didn’t think I’d been in the shower that long.

  ‘Look—’ I stood with my back to the door, blocking the way back inside. ‘You’re not serious. You can’t honestly believe that going back to Rae is going to solve anything.’

  ‘It’ll do for just now.’ She rearranged the pile of boxes. ‘Unless you wanted to talk?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘If you talk, I’ll stay.’

  Bloody hell. I don’t believe this is happening.

  I looked at my watch. Eleven twenty-five.

  ‘Look. Can I have two hours? The police want to interview Caroline at the farm. I’ve got to talk to her first. Really. I’ll come back as soon as they’ve left.’

  ‘Fine.’ She put a hand on my shoulder and moved me carefully out of the way. ‘I’ll be at Rae’s,’ she said, stepping past me into the living room. ‘When you think you know what you want, you can call me. I’m sure you still know the number.’

  And that was it.

  The traffic on the Great Western Road was abysmal. I tried every back route I could, cut all the corners that were there to be cut and jumped most of the ten sets of lights along the way. It was a particularly cathartic journey but not especially useful. I was still late.

  I drove flat out down the last half-mile of the lane and spun round the final bend, only to see the gate hanging open and a familiar blue Land Rover parked tidily beside Bridget’s Rover.

  The temptation to turn the car round and head for home was overwhelming. Or even to turn it round, head for the airport and get on a plane back to Oregon. But a lingering sense of promises made and a rather more pressing sense of innate loyalty got me through the gate and out of the car before my nerve broke. The cost of early conditioning.

  I coasted the car to a relatively quiet halt beside the pond and took one of the less noisy routes across the yard. It wasn’t exactly intentional but there seemed no need to advertise my presence unduly.

  The back door, like the gate, hung open. Inside, Inspector MacDonald stood with his back to the breakfast counter, looking like a man on the verge. Caroline was standing opposite him, with her back to the fire, quite clearly the one who was driving him there. All I could see of Elspeth Philips was the back of her head, low in the fireside chair, well out of the way. Down on the floor, Ashwood crouched with his ears flat to his head and his eyes slitted to nothing. A cat with a problem.

  The conversation was nearing its natural end. Caroline glared at MacDonald from the fireplace. ‘What exactly are you asking, Inspector?’

  She learned that tone from her mother. It was one of her best.

  I watched the Inspector take in a single deep breath.

  Go for it, man.

  ‘Ms Leader, is there any reason at all why Ms Donnelly might have killed herself? Or tried to make it look as if she had?’

  There was a long, long silence. The cat twitched its ears and left. The fire crackled with unpleasant ferocity. A tap dripped on to the stainless-steel sink at irregular intervals.

  I waited and forgot to breathe.

  ‘No,’ said Caroline Leader eventually and with absolute finality. ‘It’s not possible.’

  Even the police have to believe something as solid as that.

  That was probably a good cue for an entry but there seemed no real need to intervene. I took myself outside to talk to the horses and waited for those inside to sort themselves out. It didn’t take long.

  MacDonald came out first, running a weary hand through his hair. There was a short gap and then he was followed by Elspeth Philips and Caroline walking side by side, black hair and blonde: a pair of nonidentical twins. The WPC was dressed in a different kind of uniform: jeans and a loose-fitting shirt, both in regulation blue – the soft, unconstrained approach, carefully tailored to provide solace and support for the newly bereaved. I’m sure it made all the difference at the time.

  Caroline herself looked over-bright. Sharp-edged teeth in a sharp-edged smile and a difficult tilt to her head. A woman genuinely pushed to the edge and holding on too tight.

  In all the rest, I forget at times that she has lost her lover too. She doesn’t need this.

  I let MacDonald reach the safety of his cab before I left the horses and wandered over.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Dr Stewart.’ The nod was fairly amiable under the circumstances. ‘Your friend is a very forceful woman.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I meant to talk to her first.’

  ‘It’s all right. Somebody had to do it.’

  ‘Did she say anything useful?’

  ‘Not that I noticed, no. I think perhaps we need to talk to her another time when she’s feeling less . . . excitable.’ He sounded faintly amused. A man of iron constitution.

  ‘Do you think it’ll help?’

  ‘No. But we’ll need a couple more facts for the inquest. Nothing big. I’ll call round some other time.’ He held the door open for his colleague, who managed a remarkably human smile as she jumped up into the cab. Very resilient, the two of them.

  I joined Caroline at the fence as the Land Rover vanished up the lane. The horses had separated into small cliques and were spread out across the paddock grazing, gossiping or sleeping, according to temperament. Midnight and Balder wandered over to the gate to frisk us for nibbles, but the rest barely noticed our existence. Caroline hid herself behind Balder and began pulling the knots from his mane.

  ‘Nice to be needed, huh?’ I said. It wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular. I scratched Midnight idly behind the ears.

  ‘We could bring them back into the barn,’ suggested Caroline, invisible behind Balder’s massive head.

  ‘I think they’re safer out here.’ I knelt down to check the state of the defences. ‘As long as we can find a new chain for the gate. This one’s too easy to break. We’re going to have to tighten up the security in the next day or two if we�
�re going to stay here for long.’

  There was a slightly blank pause and I felt her go still. Balder snickered quietly and turned his head to lip at her hair.

  ‘Are you expecting more trouble?’ The question came more lightly than it might have done.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘But there’s no point in taking chances.’

  Caroline slid back to lean on the horse’s withers so that she could see me properly. She was dressed in washed-out jeans and the old lumberjack shirt with too much blue in it for the pale of her face. Her fine blonde hair stuck out at odd angles where it had defeated the morning’s token comb-through. She was draped like a rag doll across her horse, with both fists full of pulled horse hair, and her eyes were so screwed up against the light that it was impossible even to see what colour they were. But she has a degree in organic chemistry and four years in the country hasn’t stopped her mind from working the way it used to.

  ‘What’s happening, Kellen?’ she asked, and there wasn’t a lot of compromise in the question.

  I leant across and touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’

  We tried the orchard. Even in September, with the apples rotting to moulded cider on the grass and inebriated wasps holding orgies on every branch, it’s still a good place for sorting things out. I slid down with my back to a pear tree, leaving Malcolm’s rope swing for Caroline.

  She hitched herself on to the lower loop and swayed for a while in silence.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘I didn’t get here in time.’

  ‘Oh.’

  More silence.

  ‘She didn’t do it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How?’

  Good question.

  ‘Do you want the easy answer?’