Bad Blood

by Aline Templeton

  ‘This going to get you in trouble, then?’

  Hepburn grinned at her. ‘Not if they don’t find out,’ she said cheerfully as she left.

  DS MacNee was brooding over Anita Loudon’s letter in the empty CID room. From the lawyer’s date-of-receipt stamp, she’d written it quite recently, some time after she’d made the will. Maybe she’d been thinking about it, reckoning Marnie deserved to be told – or maybe it had just been a relief to confess after all the years of living a lie.

  What it definitely showed was signs she’d been beginning to crack and Marnie Bruce’s arrival would just have piled on the pressure. Did Lee know how much it was preying on her mind? Anita could even have been ready to tell Kirstie’s daughter the truth, face-to-face. If she had, and she let him get wind of it, she’d probably signed her own death warrant.

  What he’d read confirmed everything he’d thought about that slimy bastard and what he most wanted to do was to get straight up there, put his hands round his throat and choke a confession out of him.

  How was it that men like that got such a hold over women? There were plenty of examples – Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, just for a start. And as for an alibi – with the circles Lee moved in, that wouldn’t be hard to arrange.

  But could he go and pay another visit to Zombies? Fleming had been very specific: they’d been warned off by the Cairnryan branch until further notice and he wasn’t going to kid himself that he’d win in a face-off with DCI Alexander. The letter, of course, didn’t prove anything except that Drax had escaped being charged with conspiracy to murder when he was – what, eleven, twelve? No one was going to revisit that now, especially when the witness admitting to perjury was dead anyway.

  No, that was something else that would have to wait until Monday. Before he knocked off, he’d better work out a rough schedule for the team on the assumption that Fleming wouldn’t be coming in on Monday.

  At least DC Ewan Campbell would be back on duty. He never said much, but when he did say something it was always to the point – and at least MacNee wouldn’t have to spend his time refereeing spats between Macdonald and Hepburn.

  He was just thinking that when Hepburn herself appeared. ‘How did Marnie react?’ he asked.

  Hepburn pulled a face. ‘Punch-drunk, I reckon. She was more worried than pleased to hear she was being left the house – thought we’d arrest her on sus immediately.

  ‘I think she’s almost past caring about her mother, anyway. By the time someone’s been murdered and you’ve only just escaped, it’s not surprising you’d kind of lose interest in tracing a mother who showed no sign of giving a stuff about you and might even have tried to kill you herself.’

  ‘You could say.’ MacNee sighed. ‘Has she left?’

  ‘She’s waiting till I come back. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to speak to her again yourself.’

  ‘Not much point. Where’s she going? I wish she’d agreed to protection – I’m not happy about her at all.’

  ‘She doesn’t want anyone to know where she is,’ Hepburn said with perfect truth. ‘Says she feels safer that way.’

  ‘Thought that the last time too, didn’t she?’ MacNee said darkly. ‘Anyway, that’s her choice.

  ‘Right, Louise, thanks for coming in. I’ll see you at the briefing on Monday. I’ll need all the help I can get. It doesn’t sound as if the boss’ll be there and Hyancinth’s off at a meeting in London so I’ve been dumped right in it.’

  The Asian man came out of a fish and chip shop in Kirkluce High Street and walked back to the small grey car with the dent in the wheel arch, eating chips. He was hungry and cold and bored.

  He looked over at the police station he’d been watching for hours now. He’d been starting to wonder if somehow she’d left without him seeing her, but just then he saw her coming out, with another woman, heading for the car park. He sprinted the last fifty feet to his car and jumped in, spilling his fish supper onto the seat beside him, and started the engine. His heart was racing. He could have missed her and he dreaded to think what Drax would have done then.

  He’d checked before and the exit from the car park was round the back in a quieter street; it would take them a minute to reach a car and get in, so he should be just in time to follow them.

  It was starting to get dark. He turned the corner and pulled in at the side. He didn’t recognise the first car to come out but the car he’d tailed before came next, still with its courtesy light on, and before it faded he saw the driver’s red-gold hair. He smiled, waited for a moment, then eased the car out along the street behind her.

  Shelley Crichton was sitting in front of the wide-screen TV in her sitting room. It was showing a manic popular quiz show but the gales of hysterical laughter didn’t bring a flicker to her face.

  She was waiting for the news. She had seen it twice today already but there hadn’t been any more detail about the cottage at Clatteringshaws and when at last the bulletin came on the item had been dropped completely.

  She clicked the remote to turn it off then sat, stony-faced, still staring at the blank screen. Should she just leave it now – let it drop? Or should she …

  Shelley’s eyes went to the big photo that stood in a silver frame on the little table beside her chair where she could always see it just by turning her head – her Tommy, bright-faced, with that cheeky grin of his that had always melted her heart, Tommy alive.

  As always, her eyes filled with tears. That girl deserved it. And then maybe her mother might learn what it felt like to lose a child.

  The bed felt terribly big and empty when Marjory Fleming climbed in at night. She tried not to look at Bill’s pyjamas, folded neatly on his pillow.

  She was exhausted so it should be easy enough to get to sleep, but putting her head down on the pillow seemed to be a signal for the show to start: Bill collapsing at her feet, her own horror, the sense of panic till the paramedics arrived after minutes that felt like hours, on and on. And guilt, guilt.

  She’d have nagged Bill to go to the doctor if she’d noticed something wrong, but she hadn’t. A good wife would have noticed. She hadn’t been a good wife – or mother, according to Cat.

  Supposing the operation didn’t turn out to be as simple as a junior doctor thought. Supposing the worst happened – what would she have left?

  Her career – the kind described in recruitment ads as ‘fulfilling’. Compared to ‘loving wife and mother’ as a job description it sounded about as cold and empty as the bed did without Bill on the other side. She sat up, pummelled her pillows and lay down facing the other way so she couldn’t see it.

  It was no use. She tried shutting her eyes but they kept flipping open again and at last she gave up, pulled on her dressing gown and went down to make herself a cup of tea.

  The light in the kitchen was on and she hesitated, wary. If that was Cat, she’d just make her cuppa as quickly as possible, then take it back upstairs. She didn’t feel she and Cat had anything helpful to say to each other just at the moment.

  It wasn’t Cat, it was Cammie. ‘Good gracious,’ Marjory said as she came in, ‘I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you’d have crashed out long ago.’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep.’ He was looking awful, hunched over his mug of tea; the bruised cheek had swollen a bit, and with the mud washed off the other bruises and scratches that were all part of the pleasures of the game of rugby stood out starkly against his exhausted pallor.

  ‘I couldn’t either.’ The kettle was singing on the Aga and Marjory went over to make her tea. Meg the collie got out of her basket to greet her, though normally she would have been too lazy to do more than open one eye at this time of night; after Marjory had petted her she went over to the door to the hall and snuffled under it hopefully.

  ‘She’s looking for Dad,’ Cammie said and Marjory, with a lump in her throat, could only nod. She sat down beside Cammie at the big wooden table. Meg, her tail drooping, went back to her basket.

  ‘Are you sore
?’ she asked. ‘Do you need paracetamol?’

  ‘No. It’s just the usual,’ Cammie said, then, ‘Mum, I’ve been thinking. All this happened because the farm’s too much for Dad. If I hadn’t been off when Rafael was laid up, this wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Marjory said briskly. ‘If it’s a narrowed artery, it’s been going on for some time and it would have happened eventually. If I’d only been around a bit more – noticed that he was getting far more tired than he should be for a man in his forties – I’d have made him get checked out. I blame myself, if you want to know.

  ‘If all goes well – please God – I ought to rethink my job. Maybe shift into traffic, go part-time—’

  Cammie stared at her. ‘Don’t be daft! It’s not your fault – you said yourself Dad’s problem developed gradually, so by the time you could notice he’d probably have needed the operation anyway. In any case, he’s old enough to look after his own health.

  ‘You know he’s always been all in favour of your job. Said to me once the thought of you putting all that energy into running our lives made his blood run cold.’

  ‘Cheeky sod!’ Marjory said, but she was smiling.

  ‘The thing is,’ Cammie went on, ‘now this has happened he’s going to have to be careful. I can’t leave him wearing himself out while I swan off playing professional rugby. Oh, I love the game. It’s been my life, but I always knew I’d be farming in the end. There are teams I can play for without the level of commitment—’

  Marjory reacted with horror. ‘Wash your mouth out, Cameron Fleming! For heaven’s sake don’t say that to your father when you see him tomorrow or you’ll give him another heart attack.

  ‘Look, I don’t know if you know this, but your dad really was a serious contender for a Scotland jersey – not a shoo-in, but good enough to have had a trial. If he’d dedicated all his time and energy to it he might have made it, but in those days it didn’t pay and your grandfather was a lot older and determined to retire …

  ‘Dad gave up his dream to put food on the table for his family. You’ve been his compensation for that and he’d be crushed if you gave it up. Crushed, that is, after he’d seriously bawled you out for being so daft.’

  ‘But this is different. After this he’s going to have to take it easy …

  Marjory was shaking her head. ‘Not according to the doctor. He’ll have to take proper exercise and watch his diet – and that’s probably my fault too, being useless with anything except the frying pan. He said he’d be fitter than he’s been for years, remember?

  ‘Anyway, if he needs more help we can hire it in. It’s not a problem, Cammie.’

  Cammie’s hunched shoulders had straightened. ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘I’m sure so,’ Fleming said firmly.

  ‘But of course, you wouldn’t be able to afford extra help if you’d only a part-time job, would you?’ he said slyly. ‘And you’d hate it, and you’d be bad-tempered, which would put a strain on Dad and that would be bad for him too.’

  ‘You’re painting a pretty picture of your mother,’ Marjory said lightly, but she felt as if a burden had been lifted. She went on slowly, ‘Cammie, was I a rotten mother?’

  ‘Fishing for compliments, are you? No, of course you weren’t.’

  ‘Cat—’

  ‘Oh, Cat!’ her brother snorted. ‘Cat’s got issues at the moment. She hasn’t got over making a mess of vet school before she’d even started and there you are making a real success of your life.’

  ‘But she’s always resented me not being able to drop everything for family – and you did too, sometimes, I know.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure I did. But Dad was always there and most kids with working parents don’t have both of them around for everything. It’s usually the father who can’t be there but it shouldn’t be any different for the mother.

  ‘Anyway, Cat’s hardly at home now and she’s not eight years old any more.’

  ‘I know. But I want us to be close again. This really hurts.’

  Cammie gave a huge yawn. ‘Sorry. That’s not a comment. But where Cat’s concerned, it’s not you, it’s her. She’s got to work through her problems herself – there’s nothing you can do.’

  ‘You sound exactly like your father,’ Marjory said and yawned herself. ‘I still wish I could just kiss and make it better, like I used to do when you were wee.’

  Cammie got up and held out his injured cheek. ‘You can try it on that. I’m off.’

  Smiling, Marjory kissed the bruise, then watched him go. It was funny seeing him so like Bill: rather less funny, though, to see Cat showing all the bolshiness that had made her own youth a painful experience, not least for her parents.

  She hadn’t told her mother about Bill. Janet adored her son-in-law and waiting till the operation was over before she phoned her would spare her a night of anxiety; because of course by this time tomorrow he would be absolutely fine.

  Even so, she decided, almost superstitiously, that tomorrow all she would do was wait by the phone for news. She’d every confidence in Tam MacNee coping. Of course he could.

  It was such bliss to be clean and warm. Marnie had soaked in the bath until her fingers and toes were all crinkled up and then she had snuggled down in a comfortable bed. She had eaten the most delicious meal she’d ever tasted, cooked by Louise’s mum who seemed all right, except that judging by Louise’s face the things she was saying in French weren’t as normal as they looked. She’d got up, too, before they’d finished eating and come back wearing her coat, as if she was planning to go out even though it was dark now and quite late. Louise had a real job persuading her to take it off again.

  She and Louise had sat after her mum had gone up to bed, finishing off the bottle of red wine that tasted as if it was made of velvet, and kind of watching a not very good film. Louise had said she was determined not to behave like a policeman when she was off duty but they’d talked a bit about Marnie’s freak memory and that had seemed to interest her a lot.

  ‘You can remember everything? Absolutely everything?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Yes, if it’s something I saw, and the memory is triggered.’

  Louise had gone very quiet and thoughtful after that and when the film finished they came up to bed.

  Marnie had been afraid that once she lay down the memories would start, the memories and the worries about what would happen next, but lulled by warmth and wine she fell instantly into a deep, untroubled sleep.

  Untroubled, that is, until half past two when suddenly all hell broke loose, bells screaming in her ears. Marnie was out of bed and onto the landing before she was properly awake.

  Louise appeared a second later. ‘Sorry, sorry, I should have warned you! Don’t worry, it’s just an alarm I got fitted to the doors and windows so that Maman couldn’t wander out at night without waking me. I’ll just go and turn it off.’

  There was a cry of confusion from behind them and when they turned, Louise’s mother was coming out of a bedroom further along the landing in a floaty silk nightgown, her hands over her ears. She was visibly upset, calling to Louise in French.

  Louise went pale. ‘Oh God, what’s that, then?’

  She headed for the stairs and Marnie caught at the sleeve of her pyjamas. ‘There could be someone down there. You’d better call the police.’

  Louise jerked herself free. ‘I am the police,’ she said from halfway down the stairs.

  Marnie heard her shout above the continuing din, ‘Police! Stay where you are! You are under arrest.’

  Then the alarm, mercifully, stopped, though Marnie’s ears were still ringing. Louise’s mother was shivering and crying; from downstairs there was no sound and plucking up her courage Marnie pattered down in her bare feet.

  The sitting-room door was open. Louise had switched on the light and when Marnie joined her she was looking grimly at a broken window.

  ‘Don’t come any closer, Marnie – there’s glass all over the floor. Some
one tried to break in. I heard a car driving away just as I got downstairs.’

  Marnie’s stomach lurched. ‘This is because of me. I brought this on you.’

  ‘Don’t—’ Louise said, but the cries from upstairs were becoming hysterical and with an apologetic gesture she hurried away.

  Marnie stood cold with fear and shivering in the draught from the broken window. He’d followed her here too. He must be watching her all the time – even now, perhaps. She scurried back into the hall and shut the door.

  She couldn’t stay, letting her problem spill over to wreck more people’s lives. What was she to do? As Louise’s mother’s cries showed no sign of abating, she put her head in her hands and wept.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When Louise Hepburn got up, there was no sound from Marnie’s room. She was glad to think she was catching up on her sleep; it had taken more than an hour to calm Fleur down and no one could have slept through that.

  She was feeling shaky this morning and the painkillers she’d taken for her thumping headache hadn’t kicked in yet. She’d looked in on Fleur before she came down and she was sound asleep; she could only hope that a benevolent aspect of her mother’s confusion might be that she didn’t remember what had happened, or might think it was a dream.

  As Louise sipped black coffee and smoked a Gitane, she ran over the problems lying ahead. Someone to come and fix the window – priority. Fortunately she knew an emergency glazier in the town; he did a roaring trade in replacing shop windows if Saturday night in Stranraer got out of hand.

  Then, of course, she’d have to deal with Marnie – she couldn’t leave her here alone with her mother now. And she couldn’t call in pretending to be ill tomorrow, with Big Marge off and Tam saying he needed all the help he could get. Anyway, after the break-in she’d have to report it and confess what she’d done.