‘It happens. Not very nice, right enough, but not every mum’s the cuddly kind.’
‘I’ll grant you that, if you’ll admit it’s unusual, to say the least. Anyway, Marnie Bruce told me there hadn’t been an investigation.’
‘Course there was,’ MacNee said flatly. ‘She was too young to know anything about it, that’s all. The woman just disappeared, right? We looked for her. Her car was abandoned at Dumfries station and there was no trace of her after that. No sign of disturbance, no sign of anyone else at the house. No great mystery.’
‘But a kid, hit over the head by her mother – what did the press make of it?’
MacNee’s plate was empty now and he got up. ‘In those happy days of auld lang syne, my bairn, there weren’t stringers for the gutter press inside the force. And no one thought the kid would be better off for appearing in the News of the World. That’s all. OK?’
He went out. Hepburn went on with her salad, though without enthusiasm. Lettuce and hard-boiled egg stained pink by pickled beetroot were distinctly unappealing and, she reflected with a sigh, she’d probably have to eat supper in a couple of hours anyway after she went off shift and got home.
She’d definitely been warned off. ‘Leave it with me,’ Fleming had said, and MacNee’s message as he hopped around the subject in his hobnailed boots had been the same. It made her more determined than ever to find out what had gone on in those ‘happy days’ when the police weren’t subject to public scrutiny.
Marnie Bruce deserved answers to her questions and Louise Hepburn was going to see to it that she got them.
Lorna Baxter followed the others out along the street. Janette Ritchie, who had been in earnest conversation with Shelley, dropped back, waiting for her.
‘Lorna, I hope you’re satisfied, winding Shelley up like that. It’s not done her any good – she’s really upset now. And you heard what Anita said.’
‘Oh, I heard it, all right,’ Lorna sneered. ‘And I didn’t believe a word of it. Did you?’
Janette went slightly pink. ‘We’ve no reason not to believe it, and I’ve convinced Shelley not to bother Grant about it. And anyway, supposing it was Kirstie Burnside’s daughter – and don’t think I’m accepting that – what’s the point of digging everything up again?’
‘Oh, that’s great! She’s to be allowed to come and have a good laugh at Shelley’s grief and take the joke back to her mother to share, but the people who call themselves her friends just want to let her get on with it? Well, Shelley’s got some real friends who won’t stand for that. I’m one of them, and there’ll be others, no doubt.’
Janette looked at her in consternation. ‘For goodness’ sake, Lorna – what are you planning to do?’
‘“For goodness’ sake”? Goodness doesn’t come into it, as far as I can see. We’re talking about sheer wickedness.’
High on her own self-righteousness, Lorna pushed past Janette and set off down the hill towards the social housing on the other side of the main road. She had just reached it when she saw a bus passing, heading inland along the main road, and in one of the windows she caught a glimpse of reddish-gold hair.
With a turn of speed impressive for a woman of her bulk, she puffed across to her own house just opposite, bundled herself into the car that stood outside, backed out with a fine disregard for the oncoming traffic and drove off in pursuit.
Marnie had only been minutes on the bus when the call she had been waiting for came through.
‘Ms Bruce? This is DI Fleming. I understand you requested a meeting with me?’
‘Yes. The sooner the better.’ Marnie knew she sounded brusque, and she knew from the tiny pause that the person at the other end had recognised that.
‘Shall we say ten o’clock tomorrow?’
‘Yes, fine.’
She switched off the phone without saying goodbye. She wanted Fleming to know, before she set eyes on her, that Marnie meant business – and anyway, in this place what would you gain by being polite and patient? So far she’d had abuse, lies and violence.
More than anything, Marnie hated being lied to. She had known Anita Loudon was lying; she just didn’t know which bits of what she had said were true – if any. It could have been just a pack of lies from start to finish, considering the way she’d tried to bluff about Drax.
Marnie wasn’t sure exactly when she had begun to wonder who this person was who cropped up occasionally in their lives, wherever they might be, so it must have happened gradually. The man seemed to be part of the mystery of her mother’s past, the past she wouldn’t ever talk about; he would make her mother crazily happy and silly, then provoke hysterical rages and physical attacks on him, while he with his superior height held her off and laughed at her. Marnie never saw him hit her, though sometimes when she was in bed she would hear screaming and the next morning there would be bruises under her mother’s make-up and she knew not to ask.
Then a scene was unrolling in her head. She must have been about six, when they were still living in the block of flats.
Drax has just left after one of his visits. She’s glad he’s gone because he scares her. One of her friends asked her if he was her dad and she said no because she doesn’t want him to be. But maybe he is?
She’s kept out of his way today, playing in her bedroom mostly. Now he’s gone and Mum’s alone, she could go and ask her. She heard her crying after he went but she’s been quiet for a good while now.
She goes into the living room. It’s raining and it’s getting dark but Mum’s just standing staring out of the window as if there was something to look at.
‘Mum, is Drax my dad?’ she says.
Her mother turns round. ‘Wha’?’
‘Is Drax my dad? I don’t want him to be. He’s nasty.’ Then she notices the bottle of whisky on the table, the bottle that had been full at lunchtime and isn’t now. She’s wishing she hadn’t said anything as she backs away.
Mum takes two unsteady steps across the room and slaps her across the face. ‘You little bitch! How dare you?’
As she crumples into a crying heap, her mother goes back to the window and stands staring out again.
She had never asked after that. She decided she’d wait till she was too big for her mother to hit her, but she thought about it a lot. She’d even considered asking Drax himself on one of his visits to the house at Clatteringshaws, but her courage failed her and Marnie was never sure if it was because she was afraid of a violent response, or of the answer she might get. She hated to think she might have inherited any part of his character.
She was sure Anita knew, and she had a right to know too. If Anita thought that she’d got rid of her, if she thought Marnie had been scared off, she had another think coming. All that the abuse and lies had done was make her more stubbornly determined to get at the truth even if it meant taking her life in her hands and going back to Dunmore.
And then there was the policewoman. If she was planning to stonewall, she’d regret it.
She glanced down at her grazed hands, her torn and muddy jeans. She didn’t want to hang around until three, when she was supposed to get back into the B & B. She needed a change of clothes as well as a clean-up, and if her landlady didn’t like it, she could do the other thing. Marnie was in a belligerent mood as she got off the bus in Kirkluce and headed along the High Street then took the first on the right.
She didn’t notice the elderly blue Honda that had drawn in behind the bus and now pulled out to drive slowly along Bridge Street behind her, then accelerated past as she reached the B & B and rang the bell.
Lorna Baxter pulled out her mobile and dialled directory enquiries. When they gave her the number she wanted and put her through, it was a secretary who answered.
‘Could I speak to Mr Grant Crichton?’
‘Your name and business, please?’
‘Mrs Lorna Baxter, and it’s personal.’
She wasn’t sure if that would get her through, and she wasn’t sure, either, if h
e would recognise the name, but a moment later Grant came on the phone and he knew who she was all right, since he had the rather wary tone people like him tended to use to people like her.
‘Yes, Mrs Baxter. What can I do for you?’
‘I wasn’t really sure whether I should bother you,’ she said primly. ‘But something rather odd happened today and I thought you’d like to know.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Without the lighting effects and the music and the swaying crowds, the nightclub looked grubby and depressing. The three bare bulbs which were the only daytime illumination in the blacked-out warehouse cast enough bleak light to show the detritus from the night before but did nothing to break up the shadows in the corners.
The young cleaner, holding a black plastic bag for the rubbish, looked round with a sort of helpless distaste. She hated the job, hated the disgusting things she had to clear up, hated the smell of stale sweat and stale alcohol – wicked, forbidden alcohol – and the empty, silent place scared her, as if the evil things that went on here could contaminate, even at one remove.
The boss scared her too. If he was in a bad mood he’d yell at whoever was in his way, though sometimes he was all cheerful and would say things she couldn’t understand, but if he was smiling she would smile too. The best was if he ignored her completely, the worst was when he was obviously giving her an instruction and she had no idea what it was. He had never actually struck her but he often looked as if he might.
She wished she didn’t have to work here. She wished she could stay in the cramped room that was all the home she and her husband had, even if it was dark and very cold, and even if when he wasn’t there she cried most of the time for her mother and her sisters back home. But he told her that if they were to be safe she must do what Mr Drax wanted, just the way he did.
So she came each afternoon and tried to withdraw into the shadows when Mr Drax was around and now, when she heard the door of the office upstairs open and close and rapid footsteps descending, she did just that, instinctively pulling her headscarf further round her face.
As he went past her he looked grim, his eyes alight with anger. He didn’t so much as glance in her direction, just stormed across the dance floor and disappeared into the lobby beyond. A moment later the whole building reverberated with the noise of the front door slamming.
Gemma Napier was sitting on the edge of the huge kitchen table swinging her legs. Vivienne Morrison was listening to her daughter’s account of the surprise visitor as she made tea for her impatient grandson. She had been pretty as a girl and now with her fair hair fading gently into grey she was still a sweet-faced woman with a gentle manner.
‘Oh dear, that poor little soul – no, bashing your spoon on the table won’t make it come any quicker, Mikey, and watch … the sausage is hot,’ she said, setting the bowl down in front of the child. ‘I remember Marnie, of course. A funny little creature – I was always rather sorry for her. And her mother was definitely strange. You hardly ever saw her at the school and if you spoke to her you always got the impression she wished you hadn’t. I suppose it explains why Marnie seemed a bit – well, awkward or something.’
‘It wasn’t that, she—Oh hi, Dad!’
Michael Morrison came in and beamed around his family, but it was his grandson he went to first, ruffling his hair.
‘Hey, big guy! How’s my best pal? Have these ladies been looking after you properly?’
Mikey, his face smeared with baked beans, looked up. ‘She wouldn’t let me have chocolate.’ He pointed an accusing fork at his mother.
‘Not immediately before his tea, Dad,’ Gemma protested, and Michael winked at her as he said gravely, ‘Dear me, can’t have that sort of thing. I’ll need to have a word with your mum about that.’
‘Cup of tea?’ Vivienne said. ‘Had a busy day?’
‘Oh, the usual. What about the two of you?’
‘I was just telling Mum,’ Gemma said. ‘A blast from the past – this girl I used to know in primary turned up, Marnie – do you remember her? Strawberry-blonde hair, blue eyes – she came round here a lot.’
Her father looked blank. ‘You had so many friends, darling. Can’t say I do.’
‘Well, it was ages ago. She just left suddenly when I was about ten or eleven. I really missed her – she wasn’t like everyone else. Do you know, she can remember absolutely everything that has ever happened to her, just as if it was playing like a film in front of her eyes?’
‘Really?’ Michael was openly doubtful. ‘All right, she might have a good memory, but no one can do that. She probably bigged it up a bit to make herself more interesting.’
‘No, it’s true. It’s some sort of mental condition, she told me. It’s rare, but when there was publicity about one case a while ago a whole lot more people came forward.’
‘That would be useful,’ Vivienne said. ‘Imagine, if you got to the shop and had forgotten what you were meant to get, you’d just look back and see.’
‘She says it’s very difficult to cope with, actually. But what she doesn’t know is what happened when her mother disappeared. She woke up in their cottage with a head injury and no sign of her mum, and then she was taken into care. She’s come back to see if she can find out what happened and I said I’d ask you if you remembered anything about it.’
‘When was it?’ Vivienne asked.
Mikey had finished his tea. ‘Up!’ he said imperiously, holding out his arms to his grandfather.
Michael didn’t seem to notice. ‘Marnie, did you say? What was her surname?’
‘Bruce,’ Gemma said. ‘She left when we were in Year 6, and I know exactly when it was – it was the day after Halloween, and we’d gone out guising together. I was worried when she wasn’t at school the next day because she’d had an epic row with her mum before she left. I got you to take me out to the cottage where they lived, Mum, but there was no one there.’
Vivienne was frowning in an effort at recollection, but Michael shook his head. ‘Complete blank, I’m afraid. I can’t remember anything about it.’ He picked up his mug of tea and went to the door. ‘I’ll be through in the office – a couple of things to finish off.’
‘Granddad!’ Mikey, ignored, wailed in indignation. ‘I want up!’
But for once his grandfather didn’t even seem to hear what he had said.
The slamming door of Grant Crichton’s Mercedes E-Class as he parked it outside his house alerted his wife to her husband’s return from work, and the vigour with which it had been slammed sent her to the window to look for storm signals. Yes, he was upset about something; his bushy brows were drawn in a straight line and the corners of his mouth were firmly turned down as he came to the front door.
It might be one of those evenings when he sat in simmering silence and bit her head off if she asked any questions, or it might be one where he wanted to expand at large on the stupidity, dishonesty and plain bloody-mindedness of everyone in the entire world, with particular reference to those who had come into contact with him that day. As Denise went to fetch the decanter of Scotch and his favourite crystal tumbler, she decided that she felt an evening out with one of her girlfriends coming on, whether the girlfriend could make it or not.
‘Hard day, dear?’ she greeted him tentatively.
Grant sat down heavily in his lounger chair and grunted.
Silence it was, then. ‘I’m just going to put the supper on. You take your time.’ She whisked out of the room.
She took a bottle of Chablis out of the fridge and poured herself a glass, then picked up the phone. ‘Sue? Fancy a drink later? Good – half past eight, then?’
Crichton finished his whisky in two mouthfuls then went across to pour himself another, larger one. He’d barely noticed his wife, lost in his own thoughts as he’d been all afternoon. He’d postponed a meeting and refused a couple of important calls, to his secretary’s annoyance, but he hadn’t been able to think about anything else since that poisonous woman’s phone call t
his morning.
He was a very proud man, a man accustomed to being in control, to getting his own way, and the humiliation of being told that his son’s killer might be obtaining secret satisfaction from his agony, might even be laughing at it, was a painful attack not only on his feelings but on his image of himself.
He had been inclined at first to pooh-pooh Lorna Baxter’s story, but then she’d been so convincing about the resemblance. The picture of the little girl with the golden curls and the neat pixie face with bright-blue eyes rose before him yet again.
At the trial she had seemed confused: the story she had told was inconsistent, at times contradictory. But there had been a coldness in those blue eyes and her defiant attitude – even rudeness, sometimes, to her questioners – had never suggested a hint of remorse. It looked now as if for her, and her hell-spawn daughter, what she had done had been a source of pleasure, not regret.
Of course, part of his rage was directed at Shelley who had brought this upon them with her pathetic little annual ceremony, its only purpose to direct attention to herself. This wasn’t an expression of grief; real grief was suffered internally and silently. Who knew that better than he did himself?
There was nothing to say that this was the first time Kirstie Burnside’s daughter had done this either – just the first time she’d been spotted. Perhaps even a disguised Kirstie herself had come on a previous occasion, taking a delight in this demonstration of her lasting power to make them suffer? Crichton writhed at the thought.
He topped up his glass again as he tried to decide what he should do. Lorna Baxter was clearly high on the drama of it all, trying to persuade him to get up a mob to go round and scare the girl.
He couldn’t deny that was tempting. Perhaps, at last, he could find out where her mother was. It offended him that she could have a whole new life, at the taxpayers’ expense, protected from the consequences of what she’d done. He’d even employed a private detective once to try to track her down, but it had been good money for nothing. The man had claimed the trail was cold but Grant suspected that he’d been warned off.
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