Cradle to Grave

by Aline Templeton

  Yet again Crozier’s mind went back to Kenna Stewart. She had been haunting him all day since he had seen the cottage that had been hers, and the one he had grown up in himself, wiped out by the landslide.

  She had been two years older than he was, small, with fine features, creamy pale skin, bright blue eyes and a personality as vivid as her flaming red hair. In that isolated place they were constantly thrown together; she had treated him like a younger brother, teasing and mocking, and from the age of thirteen he had worshipped her with a sort of bewildered adoration.

  When he was seventeen, there had been a heady summer when she had almost taken him seriously. Almost. She was attracted to him, he knew that. She’d even let him kiss her a few times, but she’d only laughed when he talked of love and the future.

  ‘You’re still a wee boy, Gillie my lamb,’ she had said. ‘I’m a woman now. You’ve a lot of growing to do yet.’

  And perhaps he had, but she could have waited instead of going off with a man whose face should have warned her he was no good. When Crozier heard through his parents that she was alone and pregnant in London, he had written to her with a quixotic offer of marriage. She’d stubbornly refused to take it seriously, and, his youthful pride wounded, he hadn’t repeated it.

  Then Crozier had joined the army, done well and forged friendships that had got him into the music business when he resigned his commission. He’d made his own mistake with Cara’s mother, now the third wife of a French pop star. He’d long lost touch with Kenna and indeed by then she had taken on a romantic unreality in his mind.

  Yet when he had heard on the local grapevine shortly after he bought Rosscarron House that Kenna Stewart had returned to the cottages, his heart had given a foolish leap. Could they be approaching the happy ending to two long, sad tales?

  She was thinner than he remembered, and older of course – they were both that – but the hair and the eyes were still the same, eyes that lit with an inner glow when she saw him. He’d been feeling nervous about the meeting, even preparing in his head a suitable speech of welcome for a new neighbour, but it died on his lips when she said, ‘Gillie! My God, how I’ve missed you!’

  He had kissed her, on the lips but tentatively, and they had gone on to talk about youth and folly and pride.

  ‘Still,’ he said at last, taking her hand – such a thin, delicate thing – in his own great paw, ‘we can start again. We’ve got a second chance.’

  Kenna’s eyes filled with tears. She had come home, she told him, to die within sight and sound of the sea. Six months, a year, perhaps a little more if she was lucky.

  They were together almost constantly after that and she even went into remission for a spell. He was hardly ever in London, neglecting business to be with her. They talked endlessly, about the past and the present. The future was banned.

  They both had family worries. Crozier’s were about Cara, heavily pregnant now, after having produced a son with problems, which were never quite openly ascribed to her choice of lifestyle. Kenna was still grieving over the death of her daughter, a single mother, also from cancer, and she was worried about her granddaughter, Lisa, in London.

  And from that had come the deadly, disastrous plan. Lisa was working in a day-nursery for a pittance; Crozier’s grandson was being raised by irresponsible parents and an ever-changing succession of foreign girls who couldn’t speak English. The answer seemed obvious.

  ‘This is a marriage made in heaven,’ he had claimed, laughing.

  Hell, more like.

  The last time he saw Kenna, death was at her shoulder. She had outlived prediction, but the bright blue eyes, which had sparkled with life and laughter, were dulled now by illness and grief, and huge in her gaunt face. In the small, dark front room she was wrapped up in a soft shawl and a fire was burning, though it was a warm summer’s day.

  Anger had deadened his feelings. ‘You knew, Kenna! You knew she had a temper when you wished her on me.’

  ‘Never with children.’ Her voice might be weak, but she was unyielding. ‘You saw the references she had from the nursery where she worked. You heard what your daughter’s cleaner said in court.’

  ‘Heard, of course I heard! But I also heard, after the trial, about the anger-management course she’d been put on when she was on remand. Do you think, if the jury had known that, they’d have brought in the same verdict? You knew she had a temper, Kenna – you betrayed me, you of all people. I can’t forgive that.’

  Kenna bowed her head and was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, ‘You’re angry with me now. It doesn’t mean you’re going to kill me, does it? The jury heard the relevant evidence and she was acquitted.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know she was acquitted!’ He spat out the word. ‘A clever lawyer, a cleaning woman who had a grudge against Nico because he’s lively and not the easiest child.’

  ‘Still, acquitted.’

  Stubborn. She always had been, and what heartache they had both suffered as a result! Pain made him cruel.

  ‘Your granddaughter is out there, alive. Free. Able to look to a future. Mine can’t. Mine’s in a little white coffin, rotting slowly.’

  Kenna gasped, putting a hand to her throat. ‘Gillie, don’t. That’s a terrible thing to allow to lodge in your mind. It’s warping you. It will poison your life, if you let it.’

  ‘She’s poisoned my life already. And the life of my other grandchild.’

  Her reply was sharp. ‘And you threatened her, Gillie. You stood outside that court and said that you’d see to it that she paid in blood for what she’d done.’

  Crozier couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘It was just – just words.’

  ‘Words can poison too. She’s living in fear.’

  He knew he should give reassurance, but the knowledge that the girl too was suffering gave him a dark, secret joy.

  ‘Actions have consequences,’ he said.

  Kenna looked at him and he saw pity in her eyes – pity, from a woman who had only days, hours, perhaps, to live.

  ‘Gillie, my darling, if you don’t forgive, it will hurt you more than anyone else.’ She closed her eyes and sagged in her chair, and for a moment he caught his breath. But they opened again.

  ‘I can’t take any more. Can we say goodbye, with love?’

  If he agreed, if he softened by even the smallest degree, he would fall apart. Clinging to his anger for support, he said harshly, ‘No, I don’t think so,’ and, to his eternal shame, walked out.

  It was the worst thing he had ever done, in a life that had been far from blameless. Kenna was right, of course: he had been tortured ever since by the memory. And now, sometimes, he even found himself looking at his grandson with dismay and wondering . . .

  But he mustn’t wonder. What was done was done, the past was past, and he had more than enough present problems to deal with.

  The contractors would be waiting. He turned his back to the sea and headed towards the house, across the garden and up on the path through the little copse of trees towards the lower field.

  The police car drew up beside the shattered bridge and the two officers got out to inspect it, and the car, nose down in the river, its open door wedged into the bank.

  ‘Going to have fun getting this sorted out, Sarge,’ the constable said.

  ‘You could say. They were lucky they could walk away from it. Anyway, check out the number – find out who it belongs to.’

  He read it out and walked over to inspect the wreckage while the other checked the computer, then came back giving a whistle of amazement.

  ‘Know whose it is? DI Fleming’s, that’s who! That’ll have everyone jumping like hens on a hot griddle!’

  His senior officer turned. ‘And I’ll tell you something else, laddie. See that bridge strut sticking up out of the water? That’s not broken – that’s been sawed through.’

  Fleming still felt very light-headed as she went carefully downstairs, holding the banister. But she had slept and showered and was even back
in her own clothes, magically laundered to perfection and left in her room while she slept, thanks, presumably to the young man they seemed to call Chris. He’d fed her Nurofen before she went to sleep, too, and her headache was bearable. She was still frightened, though: knocks on the head were chancy things, and she’d have gone to see a doctor if there was one available. Since there wasn’t, she’d just have to tell herself, along with everyone else, that she was all right.

  The music, which they appeared to use in this house instead of wallpaper, had been switched off and without it the white hall echoed and the house felt curiously cold and empty. As she stood hesitating at the foot of the stairs, the silence seemed to gather about her and it wasn’t comfortable; she had the fanciful thought there was something – or someone – nearby holding its breath. Nonsense, of course.

  She walked briskly to a couple of doors, her shoes clicking loudly on the hard flooring, and knocked but got no answer. She didn’t like to barge in and decided instead to go through the below-stairs door which presumably led to the domestic premises.

  The kitchen, lined with high-gloss white cupboards and fitted out with a lot of stainless steel and the sort of high-tech equipment Fleming couldn’t imagine ever needing, was clinically clean and bare of any clutter, utterly impersonal. It too was empty.

  Noticing a phone on the wall, she picked it up hopefully, but it was still dead. She replaced it slowly, trying not to dwell on the uncomfortable fact that she couldn’t just walk out of this strange house, no matter how much it was getting to her.

  She returned to the hall. Where was MacNee? She could do with some support. Her head was swimming a bit, but surely it wasn’t only that which made her feel it was all very odd.

  The room Fleming had woken up in – all white too, though with a chalky distemper on the walls and splashes of blue and green in an abstract painting and some cushions – was like a bedroom in a luxury hotel, and the rest of the place didn’t suggest the sort of holiday house where you could kick off your shoes and relax.

  She was twitching about being out of touch with headquarters. Bailey would have been expecting her to go straight to the Rosscarron Cottages to direct operations there and wouldn’t be pleased when she wasn’t available to answer the questions the press would undoubtedly be asking. By now, of course, they would know what had happened to the bridge and would be having to deal with the problem of hundreds of disappointed youngsters, including her own. Bailey would love that too.

  It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Bailey had spelled out that her suspension had raised question marks in her super-iors’ minds and what was needed now was a peaceful spell when she could win back trust with quiet efficiency. That wrecking the car wasn’t her fault would be acknowledged, but the feeling that she had created more problems – including, blackest of sins, a budgetary one – would linger. She could almost hear Bailey’s voice muttering, ‘Blasted woman!’

  She felt vulnerable in her work, and she felt vulnerable in this weird house where the white walls, which should have given the illusion of airy space, seemed aggressively restrictive. And where the hell was Tam?

  Fleming looked about her uncertainly, then decided to go to the sitting room at the back of the house where they had been taken earlier to wait for Crozier. As she went towards it, she could hear the sound of raised voices, though the accompanying sound effects suggested that they were recorded rather than real. When she opened the door, this room too was empty, but the big plasma screen was showing Harry Potter in the customary encounter with some sinister being. Fleming entered the room, shut the door behind her and switched off the TV.

  The sun was streaming through the window now and she went over to enjoy the first rays of summer warmth in what felt like weeks. Wisps of steamy vapour were wreathing the low trees and bushes of the scrubby spinney opposite.

  As she watched, a rough-looking man came lurching out of it and down over the grass in front, then headed off away from the house. He was looking round about him blearily and Fleming’s practised eye had no difficulty in recognising one, in the old phrase, ‘having drink taken’, though he looked as if he might suffer from a limp as well.

  She was turning away from the window when the door opened behind her and a mocking voice said, ‘Hey, hey! If it isn’t the Great Detective!’

  With a sinking heart she turned to face the man she had once believed would be the love of her life, Joss Hepburn.

  7

  Declan Ryan was simmering with frustration. What did he have to do to get rid of the bugger? His nerves were ragged enough already; he didn’t need this.

  God knows he’d tried to shake him off. He had disappeared upstairs after lunch, hoping he could slip out unnoticed, but MacNee had staked out the hall, so eventually, with a bad grace, he’d had to come downstairs.

  ‘Oh, there you are! I was just having a wee forty winks,’ the man said, getting up from a chair by the hall table with an unpleasant smile. Lying bastard!

  Ryan had led him up the path through the garden and they’d been at the campsite for the best part of an hour. MacNee showed no sign of leaving, clinging like one of the burrs you found in the undergrowth around here, which only hooked on more firmly when you tried to remove them. It was vital to get him away from here.

  He’d switched on the charm with MacNee, leading him up the muddy path through the copse of trees at the side of the house, which came out at the top of the camping field by the Portaloos. Then he’d done the glad-handing bit, going round the happy campers individually, explaining at length about the problems, apologising and promising that Crozier would be coming up from the house soon to speak to the contractors in the top field and would have a word with them after that. Once he’d guaranteed refunds and possibly even compensation, there had been no unpleasantness, though that might have had something to do with the presence of the Law at his elbow, literally.

  There’d been no chance of a quiet word with Bob Lawton, and Ryan’s facial signals, made behind MacNee’s back, were met with a blank stare – not unnaturally, with MacNee taking an unhealthy interest in their camper van. Now Angela was all ostentatious innocence, clucking over the officer’s unfortunate experience and offering him a cup of tea, ‘or a beer, since you’re off duty?’ She hoped!

  Inspiration struck. Ryan broke in on Angela’s hospitable offers. ‘I’d better go down to the bridge and take a look at the destruction for myself. I’ll see you back to the house, Sergeant.’

  He hadn’t really expected to get away with that, and he didn’t.

  ‘Och, no,’ MacNee said. ‘I’ll chum you down – see what it looks like from dry land.’

  It wasn’t ideal, but anything was better than having him hanging around here. ‘I’ll pick up the Discovery at the house, then,’ Ryan said, and they headed down the path together. He was probably only imagining that he heard a gusty sigh of relief coming from the Lawtons’ direction.

  ‘She’s done what?’ Superintendent Bailey demanded. ‘Driven her car off a low bridge? I don’t believe it – this is too bad!’

  DS Macdonald quailed. ‘I don’t think she could help it, sir. The bridge seemed to have been—’ he swallowed hard ‘—sabotaged.’ He half shut his eyes, waiting for the blast.

  With Bailey, irritation might be noisy but calamity was dumb. He sagged in his chair, staring at Macdonald in disbelief. There was a moment’s silence before he said heavily, ‘All right. Tell me what’s happened.’

  ‘Struts and props on the bridge seem to have been sawn through. The car’s a write-off, but they could see the interior was intact and airbags had inflated – no sign of blood or anything. There was no one around when the officers reached the scene, but I think we can safely assume MacNee and Fleming either got themselves out or were rescued.’

  At the mention of the wrecked car Bailey had winced, but he said only, ‘Presumably if there was serious injury, it would have been possible for someone to get across the river to call in help?’


  ‘I guess so, but it’s running pretty high, so you wouldn’t do it unless it was a serious emergency. Otherwise the headland’s completely cut off. Should we try to raise a chopper to fetch them back?’

  The superintendent considered. ‘It’s not urgent, is it, since we can be fairly sure they’re all right? And everything has to be costed – that car’s money down the drain too. Leave it for the moment, Andy – see if we can get someone else to pick up the bill. I’m more concerned about the notion of sabotage. What are we thinking here?’

  Macdonald, unused to the concept of community of thought with his superintendent, said tentatively, ‘There was a gentleman who was very unhappy about the idea of a pop festival being held at all, and then his house was flooded. He presumably has something of a grudge.’

  Bailey’s face brightened. ‘Good thought, Andy, though I would quibble with your description of Jamieson as a gentleman. Bring him in and we’ll see what he has to say for himself. All right?’

  Up to a point, Superintendent, Macdonald thought, but he said only, ‘I don’t think anyone knows where he is at the moment, sir. Evacuated, presumably, but—’

  ‘Then find out!’ Bailey’s voice rose again. ‘And the kids arriving for the festival – what’s happening about that?’

  ‘Traffic are handling it, sir. They’re stopping cars on the road down from Kirkcudbright.’

  ‘Heading them off at the pass? Best we can do, I suppose. We just have to hope they don’t decide to cause trouble – we’ve got enough of that already.’

  MacNee had been disciplining himself not to look at his watch again until at least a quarter of an hour had gone past. As the time ticked by, it only made him feel worse. It must be almost five o’clock by now. His resolve broke.

  It wasn’t, quite. Ten to five: there was still time to get things sorted out if the phones were back on when they returned from the riverside. Or maybe when they reached it, there’d be someone on the other side – thwarted ravers, say – who could be given a message.