Bad Blood

by Aline Templeton

  ‘I’m moving about a bit. Look, I’ll get in touch with you, all right? I’m trying to see a few more people and then I’ll be clearer about when I’m free.’

  ‘Well, see you do, or I’ll keep phoning. I’m not letting you do the disappearing act on me again! Speak soon.’

  Marnie went back to the stopcock. When at last it turned she ran the cold tap to clear the system, her eyes blank as she watched the dirty water belching out. Gemma’s open-hearted warmth sounded genuine, but Marnie felt as if she was standing in the cold outside the hospitably open door to a room with a blazing fire, unable to cross the threshold. Perhaps it was the ugliness of her childhood that had bred a wariness of intimacy, a lack of trust. God knew she needed a friend, but Gemma’s protected existence had given her a sort of childlike innocence that couldn’t begin to understand the dirty reality of the life Marnie had always known. However determined Gemma might be to keep in contact, it was pointless.

  At least she had no idea where Marnie was now. No one had any idea. She could do what she liked, go where she liked and if she was careful she could be completely unobserved. Invisible, almost.

  She filled the pan she had bought and boiled up the water. The kitchen felt quite cosy now, with the warmth from the gas burner and the gentle light. She sat down to drink her tea, feeling almost dizzy with the sense of freedom.

  Shelley had slept badly the night before and then brooded all day over the late-night phone call. She’d thought the voice had been Lorna Baxter’s, but when she phoned her in the morning and challenged her about it, she’d just laughed and denied it.

  ‘There’s lots of folks in Dunmore on your side,’ she said. ‘It would be one of them, maybe. Still, you might hear some good news today, you never know.’

  Shelley had tried to insist on being told what she meant, but Lorna, who seemed to be in high good humour, refused to be drawn. ‘I’ll call you if I hear anything, but if you ask me, Kirstie Burnside’s daughter won’t come bothering us again.’

  That sounded like good news – sort of. It wasn’t enough, though, that the girl should be driven away. She had to be made to tell where her mother was hiding first.

  During Shelley’s troubled night, the intoxicating possibility that she might at last be able to confront Tommy’s killer had filled her dreams as well as her muzzy early-morning thoughts. For years she had been schooling herself to accept that the meeting would never happen, even though nowadays some people got that chance. Restorative justice, they called it, but not in a case like this. She would never be given the opportunity to make the murderer of her son come face-to-face with her own evilness, to show her hell gaping at her feet. Oh no, Kirstie Burnside had been hidden by a benevolent state that was still protecting her now. If there was the faintest chance of getting past the protective shield, Shelley wasn’t going to let it pass.

  What would it achieve, Janette had asked her once when Shelley had been expanding on that familiar theme. She’d stammered a bit, mouthed the words like ‘closure’ and ‘apology’ – as if any apology could wipe out Tommy’s death. Janette would have been shocked if she’d been able to read her friend’s mind.

  She’d waited in, hoping that Lorna, or someone, would call and tell her what had been going on but the phone remained obstinately silent. After lunch she’d phoned Janette ‘just for a chat’ but it was obvious that no local gossip had come her way either.

  Anita knew what Shelley needed to know. She’d be out at work just now, but if there was no more news by the evening, she’d have to get hold of her. And if she wasn’t keen to disclose Kirstie Burnside’s whereabouts – well, Shelley might just have to have that face-to-face confrontation with her instead.

  The house was in darkness when Anita got back from work. There was no sign of Drax’s car either and Anita gave a great sigh of relief as she let herself in. She had dreaded finding him still here. She didn’t want him quizzing her about her day.

  She was getting better at lying, though, lying and telling half-truths. Perhaps she only needed a little more practice and even his eyes, that always seemed able to look right through her, would lose their power.

  It was just possible that everything might settle down again. The police obviously didn’t know who’d been involved in this disturbance, whatever it was; she reckoned she’d convinced them Marnie was flaky, so if nothing else happened they might not bother to pursue it.

  And if Marnie Burnside had been scared off, if Shelley had accepted the story Anita had told her, if Drax had just gone back to Glasgow to await events, she might stop feeling she was standing on the edge of a cliff and the headache that Vivienne’s ibuprofen and sympathy hadn’t been able to shift might subside.

  That was a lot of ‘ifs’. But when she drew the curtains and switched on the lamps and the fire and the TV and sat down with a mug of tea, the comfortable normality of it all began to soothe her.

  Anita hadn’t done much to this room since her parents died. Coming back to Dunmore had been meant as a temporary move, before she went to Glasgow to be at least near Drax, if not with him. It had never happened, though, and here she still was twenty years later. In this familiar room where nothing had changed since she was a small child, it felt as if nothing ever would change. With this treacherous reassurance, she put her head back against the cushions and drifted into a doze.

  Marjory Fleming drove back home to Mains of Craigie late as usual after a long, unsatisfying day. Her talk with Marnie Bruce had left her feeling very uncomfortable and the investigations into the demonstration in Bridge Street had gone nowhere, with DC Hepburn sure that Anita Loudon was lying about what had happened during Marnie’s visit and DS Macdonald ready to believe that the girl was to some degree, at least, fantasising.

  They were certainly no closer to finding out who had been involved in the protest. Given that the crowd had dispersed instantly and no real harm had been done, it simply wasn’t worth police time to pursue it.

  Looking through the file that Rowley had given her hadn’t improved her morale either. It was little more than a list of the shops whose carrier bags had been among the illegal immigrants’ possessions and another list of firms nearby that had regular dealings with overseas customers through Cairnryan. There were half a dozen local companies and another ten based in Glasgow, including the consortium which had Grant Crichton’s name as one of the directors.

  Tomorrow, she supposed gloomily, she would have to send uniforms round the shops asking questions, and get FCAs on to digging out what background they could. If ever there was a waste of scarce resources, this was it.

  She arrived at the farmhouse in a gloomy mood. She needed Bill to cheer her up, pour her a drink and talk about something that had nothing to do with police work. In fact, why shouldn’t they phone the next-door neighbours and see if they’d like to come over? The Raeburns, running a dairy farm themselves, had the same interests and concerns and Hamish was always good for a laugh.

  Her spirits had lifted as she went through to the kitchen. Bill was there, sitting in the sagging chair by the Aga, but he was fast asleep with a mug of tea, still full, balanced precariously on the arm. Meg the collie, wakened by Marjory coming in, registered her arrival with a wave of her tail then shut her eyes again.

  Smiling, Marjory went to rescue the mug in case Bill knocked it over as he woke. It was cold so he seemed to have been asleep for a good while. It must have been a very tiring day, for him and the dog, and her spirits sank again. Neither of them were as young as they used to be; there was grey around Meg’s muzzle now and Bill, when she looked at him more closely, looked positively drawn.

  She cleared her throat and her husband opened his eyes.

  ‘Good gracious, did I doze off?’ He sat up. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Half past six. What time did you come in?’

  He still looked fuddled with sleep. ‘Can’t remember – half past five, quarter to six?’

  Marjory emptied the cold tea into the sink. ‘Mor
e tea or a drink before supper?’ she said, going across to the freezer. ‘There’s a goulash here but it’ll take an hour at least.’

  ‘Oh, a drink, I think. I’ll open a bottle of red. Then an early night. It’ll be another heavy day tomorrow.’ He heaved himself out of the chair.

  ‘What were you doing today?’

  ‘The tupping’s over so Meggie and I were taking the ewes back up the hill. Rafael’s sprained his ankle.’

  Marjory looked at him in dismay. ‘Oh no! And of course Cammie’s away for training, just when you really need him. Maybe they’d give him time off—’

  Bill recoiled. ‘What? When he’s still working to consolidate a place in the team?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh sorry, that was blasphemy, I suppose. You’d better call Jake and see if he’ll come out of retirement for a bit till Rafael’s on his feet again.’

  ‘Lassie, I did it myself for years before I ever got Jake in at busy times. And Cammie’ll be back in a couple of days.’

  ‘You were in your twenties then. You’re not twenty now. And look at you – you’re shattered!’

  ‘Och, it’s nothing a sit down and a glass of wine won’t sort. And a good night’s sleep.’ He gave a huge yawn as he opened the bottle and put it on a tray.

  No point in suggesting the Raeburns, then, and Bill obviously wasn’t going to be in sparkling form either. Marjory felt the gloomy mood descend again.

  Denise Crichton put the finishing touches to the little watercolour that she’d started at the class this morning. There was still something wrong with her boat; it didn’t seem so much to be floating in the water as lying on top of it, but the artist who ran the class had said she was showing signs of improvement. He was always very encouraging to ‘his ladies’.

  The other thing that was good about taking the class was being able to annex one of the bedrooms for her studio. She’d had fun setting it up, though she didn’t really need the big easel, and the elaborate box of oil paints hadn’t even been opened yet. Most of the time she didn’t actually paint at all. The main purpose was to give her somewhere to escape from Grant when he was in one of his moods.

  They seemed to be getting more frequent. Yesterday he’d been impossible and had barely seemed to notice whether his wife was there or not and tonight, after a supper when she tried to make bright conversation and got only grunts in reply, she’d retreated to her sanctuary and heard him go into his study and close the door. A little later she thought she heard the car driving away, though she hadn’t heard the car door slammed in Grant’s usual vigorous way.

  She was curious enough to glance out of the window and yes, the car was gone. He hadn’t told her he was going out – back to the office, she guessed. She did hope that there wasn’t anything wrong on the business side. Being married to Grant without the perks of success would be a bleak prospect.

  It was quite a bit later that Denise heard a car’s engine and what sounded like tyres on the gravel. She glanced out of the window again, but it wasn’t there at the front so perhaps she’d been mistaken. She went back to her boat, but after dabbing at it a bit longer decided with a sigh that she was making it worse, not better. She washed out her brushes and packed away her paints, planning a nice long bath then bed. She wasn’t going to wait up for Grant.

  But when she went downstairs to finish up in the kitchen she noticed light showing under the door of Grant’s study, so it must have been the car after all. She knocked, then put her head round.

  ‘Oh, you’re back! I wasn’t sure. I’m just going off for a bath – do you want a cup of tea or anything?’

  Grant swung round in his chair. ‘What do you mean, back? I haven’t been out – I’ve been here all evening.’

  Surprise made her incautious. ‘But I heard you, going out earlier—’

  His face was mottled red with temper. ‘Then there’s something wrong with your ears! Anyway, how would you know, up there in your so-called studio? I’ve been here all evening. Is that clear?’

  She realised he was actually shaking with his emotion and she knew enough not to argue. ‘Fine, if that’s the way you want it. You were here all evening.’

  ‘Right, right,’ he said. There was a little fleck of spittle at the corner of his mouth and he took out a handkerchief to wipe it away. ‘You go on up to bed. I’ll come up later.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said, closing the door and going through to the kitchen. What had all that been about? The car, she suddenly noticed through a side window, had been parked round there, not in the front where he usually put it. He must have been trying to come back quietly.

  Why did he feel he had to sneak out? It was really crazy – if he was having an affair or something he could easily just say he was going back to the office and it wouldn’t occur to her to question it.

  Denise toyed with the affair idea. As she wiped down the sink she thought wistfully of alimony – lots of money and no Grant. But she certainly wasn’t going to rock the boat by demanding an explanation until she was quite sure she had all the evidence she needed.

  It was one of those perfect late autumn days: clear blue sky, a sharp touch of frost in the air, the leaves on the trees thinning out now, but still showing red and gold. As Janette Ritchie set out on her usual walk down the hill to get her morning copy of The Herald, the cold air prickled the back of her throat – almost like the bubbles in champagne, she thought. With the deep blue of Loch Ryan below it was such a perfect picture that she felt quite sorry for all those poor, deluded folk who went off to live in Spain and would never know the sheer joy of a sunny November day in Scotland.

  Unconsciously prompted by the brilliant display of berries on a mountain ash growing in someone’s garden, she was humming ‘O Rowan Tree’ as she came to the children’s play park. Shelley’s flowers, still lying on the bench where she had placed them, caught her eye and she stopped, hesitating.

  The petals of the roses had browned into decay and the foliage was withered. Though Janette felt her usual revulsion about going into the park, she really ought to remove them. There was nothing more pathetic than memorial flowers left to rot, she always thought.

  She opened the gate and went over to pick up the bouquet, then, with a grimace of distaste, gathered up the slimy petals that fell as she moved it and looked round for a bin. There was one over on the far side, just beside the slide, and she bit her lip. The last time she’d been in that area was forty years ago, and the picture was vivid in her mind even now.

  There was nowhere else to put them. She dropped the flowers in the bin and turned. She saw, first of all, the shoes: smart nude-beige shoes with a medium heel sticking out from behind the slide. One was lying on the ground beside a foot with toenails painted a bright red. There was a dark red and cream skirt rumpled up the legs. There was a cream sweater – no, a partly cream sweater patterned with great rust-coloured patches that clashed with the skirt. There was a head with blonde, rust-streaked hair – but the top was just a great bloody mass of something.

  That was when she screamed, screamed and screamed. But no one came, and she had to stop screaming sometime. She could do nothing here, and if she looked again she thought she might faint. On legs that were barely able to support her, Janette staggered out of the park, looking frantically up and down the deserted street. She was in such a state of shock that she wandered up and down for five minutes before it occurred to her to go to the nearest house and ring the bell.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The photographer had just left. In her white paper protective suit DI Fleming stood grim-faced beside the slide, looking down at the pathologist as he crouched at his work. After a brief, nauseated glance at the victim she was concentrating her gaze on the back of his hooded head.

  ‘Not killed here, I can tell you that for a start,’ he said. ‘Method – straightforward enough, unless something emerges later.’

  ‘Any indication about the weapon?’ Fleming asked, though given the mess it was hard to imagine t
hat there could be.

  ‘Blunt instrument – that’s about all I could say for certain. Something long and narrow, applied with force – a crowbar, possibly. Once we’ve done some measurements I might be able to be a bit more precise.’

  ‘Was it – was it quick?’ The thought that it might not have been sent a shiver down her spine.

  He thought for a moment. ‘With that degree of force, unconscious after the first or second blow, most likely. May even have been knocked out first.’ He picked up first one hand then the other to scrutinise the nails. ‘Looks as if she didn’t get a chance to fight back, anyway. Hang on, we’ll have a look at the back of her head.’

  Seeing him grasp the matted hair, Fleming turned away to look over her shoulder. DS MacNee had arrived; he was standing by the gate of the play park in conversation with the uniform detailed to record visitors to the site. She made a gesture encouraging him to put on a suit and come in but he just looked blank. MacNee was even more squeamish than she was.

  The pathologist put down the head again. ‘Blow to the back, there. Can’t say it was definitely the first one but it seems likely to have laid her out.’

  That was something, at least. ‘I suppose I needn’t ask about estimated time of death?’

  ‘Not with any degree of accuracy. There’s rigor developing but a frost last night would have speeded that up and I’d need an indication of how long she was there and where she’d been beforehand – a warm room, say, would complicate it further.’

  ‘So it’s the usual – ETD sometime between when she was last seen and when the body was found?’

  The pathologist gave a weary smile. ‘Old ones are the best ones, eh? I daresay you wouldn’t go far wrong with an assumption of somewhere between seven in the evening and midnight or thereabouts. Know who the lady is, then?’

  ‘The woman who found her thinks she knows her but with the state she’s in we’ll need fingerprint confirmation, I suppose.