Cradle to Grave

by Aline Templeton

  Lisa walked down the drive, under the rowan trees, which had not, after all, protected her from harm, then across the road and between the whin bushes on to the shore.

  The sea was silky calm today, a dark greyish-blue under an overcast sky. The lapping of the waves was a soothing sound, almost like a lullaby. There was a sweet, coconut perfume in the air from the yellow flowers of the whin.

  Lisa stepped into the water, gasping from shock at how cold it was. She was shivering with nerves and her heart was beating so hard that it felt as if it might leap out of her chest. Turn back now? She didn’t have to do this . . .

  But tomorrow would be another day of torment, and then there would be another, then another, until— They said drowning was an easy death.

  She took a deep, deep breath and then another step into the water, and one more, and one more until she was walking steadily into the sea. The penetrating cold was painful at first, but as she went further and further, she began to feel a curious sort of warmth, and at last the ground dropped away from under her feet.

  19

  Jan Forbes sat knitting in a chair by the window of the Rowantrees Hotel lounge, her plastered leg up on a stool in front of her. She looked over her spectacles with an indulgent smile as Rosie’s mother tried to convince her daughter that the barely visible scratch on her knee was unlikely to prove fatal.

  She glanced down at her pattern chart and back at the knitting, pulled a face and started picking back the previous row. The ball of elephant-grey wool slipped off her knee and she reached down awkwardly to fetch it. As she straightened up, she glanced out of the window, then stared, at first unable to take in what she was seeing.

  ‘Oh! Oh, no, it’s my friend!’ She swung her leg off the stool and struggled to her feet as Rosie’s father came over to see what had upset her. ‘She’s walking into the water – I think she’s trying to drown herself?!’

  Before she had finished the sentence, the man was out of the room and running down the drive.

  MacNee went to make his report in some trepidation, but he’d been working hard that afternoon and there’d actually been satisfaction in getting a grip on all the evidence and knowing exactly what was happening, even if it wasn’t a lot at the moment. They’d discovered the pub where Jason Williams had taken a room, but it hadn’t turned up anything new.

  But he’d had a wee idea that had paid off; he’d keep that till after Fleming had read right through, like the sweetie they gave you in posh restaurants with the coffee to put you in a good mood to pay the bill.

  She maybe didn’t greet him with a great big hug, but she was pleasant enough. She’d never been one who believed in holding grudges, right enough, and when she’d gone through the report, she said, ‘That’s very helpful, Tam,’ then added, with what was almost a smile, ‘Maybe you’re wasted out on the streets.’

  It wouldn’t be too clever to retort, ‘Away and boil your head!’ just at the moment. Instead, he said, ‘There’s another thing I came up with. They’re just starting to run through the CCTV footage for Saturday night and I thought I’d have a wee keek at it first. It only covers the High Street, mind, and there’s plenty side streets you could go along instead. But there was a big silver Mercedes coming along at around nine o’clock, and when I checked the number, guess whose it was?’

  ‘Joss Hepburn’s.’ Fleming’s voice was very flat.

  ‘The car-hire firm’s,’ MacNee corrected her. ‘It’s not even to say Hepburn was driving, and there’s no record of the car coming back. But it shoots holes right through the alibis those bastards gave us.’

  ‘Most likely Hepburn, though.’

  ‘Most likely,’ MacNee agreed. ‘But I’ve been thinking . . .’

  ‘Oh? I like it when you say that, Tam.’ For the first time Fleming’s voice held real warmth.

  ‘What would Hepburn want to kill Williams for? There’s maybe murky stuff we don’t know about, but you see there’s this idea I keep coming back to. We know Williams killed Rencombe, right? And we know Rencombe was only doing a job for Crozier, so it’s a reasonable bet that Williams needed to kill Crozier too.’

  Fleming nodded. ‘I think that’s been in all our minds. Go on, Tam.’

  ‘Who cared most when Crozier was killed?’

  ‘Pilapil. Of course,’ Fleming said slowly.

  ‘Me and Andy Mac were talking about the methods. The first two killings, it was something that came to hand, like it wasn’t planned in advance. The third one . . .’ He explained his reasons for believing that the murderer had come prepared.

  ‘Revenge,’ Fleming said, thinking about it. ‘Pilapil could see it as performing a last service for his beloved boss.’

  ‘Right. Do you reckon he maybe knows what Rencombe’s business with Williams was – maybe been in touch with Williams since?’

  ‘Otherwise how would he know where to find him? Taking it at its highest, it’s possible. He looks like our only source of information on that, unless Williams’s mobile gives us a few hints or we get something from the Met once they get round to checking out Rencombe’s office. For some reason they’re not giving it top priority.’

  MacNee sniffed. ‘We’ll wait long enough, no doubt. Too grand for the likes of us, that lot.’

  Fleming rolled her eyes, but let it pass. ‘Tomorrow, then. We’ll start by bringing Hepburn in again, first thing. We’ll turn Kershaw and Campbell loose on him this time and see what he has to say about the car being in Kirkluce. Once we find out about that, we can talk to Pilapil.’

  She hesitated. ‘I know you think I should do a formal interview with Hepburn. I’ll watch through the one-way panel, and if there’s anything I see they could pick up on, I’ll pass it through, but I have reasons for feeling that in an interview my position would be compromised.’ Her expression was rueful.

  Feeling deeply uncomfortable, MacNee said, ‘Aye. I’m sorry.’

  Fleming went on to discuss details. She hadn’t relented yet on the desk job for him, but he got up feeling that he was at least heading for forgiveness. He was on his way out when she said, ‘By the way, how’s Bunty? Still at her sister’s?’

  ‘That’s right. Oh, she’s fine,’ he said, but he shut the door with an uncomfortable feeling that he hadn’t sounded convincing.

  With her throat raw from vomiting sea water, Lisa Stewart was lying on her bed with her eyes closed. Jan Forbes, looking shaken, was in a chair beside her holding her hand, while Susan Telford hovered with a mug.

  ‘Could you maybe manage a sip or two of this, dear?’ she said. ‘It’s just hot sweet tea – very good for shock. Look, I’ll put my arm behind you, like this.’

  It was easier to do as she was told than to argue. Lisa sat up, and indeed the drink was soothing. It gave her something to do too, so she didn’t have to see the look of pity on the other women’s faces.

  Her head was spinning. It was hard to think clearly when you were so buffeted by emotions – feelings like embarrassment and anger with herself. How useless did you have to be, to try to kill yourself and fail, and end up having to thank a well-meaning stranger for pulling you out and carrying you dripping and choking into the hotel, as if you were grateful? Well, she wasn’t. Why couldn’t they have left her to drown?

  There was a doctor coming, they told her. There would be questions, follow-ups, medication even. Lisa tried to blot out the thought of it.

  At last she managed to drink enough tea to satisfy Susan, but Jan didn’t leave with her. Lisa lay back on her pillows and shut her eyes, but when Jan took her hand again, she didn’t pull it away. The warmth of that firm grasp was comforting.

  As was Jan’s soothing voice, talking, not asking questions. ‘You’ve had too much to bear, Lisa. You’ve been shouldering the sky, my dear, and no one can do that for long without help. I expect you’re sorry you didn’t succeed, just at the moment. You probably feel angry that we brought you back. But you have friends now and there’s nothing so bad that we can’t sort it out tog
ether.’

  Lisa felt tears beginning to roll down her cheeks, silent tears, which spilled over as if her misery were welling up from inside and overflowing. She had no control over them.

  The grip on her hand tightened a little. ‘Tell me the worst thing,’ Jan said. ‘Just the worst one.’

  Where to start? But the words, like the tears, came out before Lisa could control them.

  ‘The lies,’ Lisa’s raw, husky voice whispered. ‘It’s always been lies, lies from everyone, so that I have to lie too. Not my gran, though – she never did. She was the only one I could ever trust.

  ‘But my mother – my dad was a bad man, but she told me he was killed in a car accident when he’d actually died in a fight in prison. Then I had to lie about that too, because if the police had found out my background, they’d have been even more sure I’d killed little Poppy.

  ‘And they all told lies, after she died. Cara told the police Nico was asleep in his room when they came back home that night, and it wasn’t true. I’d heard him moving about the house all evening, but I couldn’t find him. He was hiding from me – he was angry after I punished him for hitting his little sister. He came out when his parents came home and I saw there was mud on his shoes.

  ‘I went to check on Poppy and she wasn’t there. The cot . . . the cot was empty.’ Lisa’s breathing grew ragged in her agitation. ‘I just knew what he’d done. I ran down the stairs – I fell, because I was going so fast. I scrambled up and went outside.

  ‘It was a terrible night – wind and rain and very dark – but I could see a white bundle on the lawn and—’ She choked. ‘She was just lying there, like a little doll. Still and white – but so pretty, my Poppy, even then! I loved her so much! I hugged her, I tried to warm her, but she was cold, so cold . . .’

  Lisa was sobbing now, and Jan’s own eyes were full of tears. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘You did what you could.’

  Lisa grabbed a handful of tissues from the box they had put beside her and mopped her face. She swallowed her sobs, and when she went on, there was anger in her voice.

  ‘Then there was the press, and the police too. They told lies about me, and then after the trial they said I shouldn’t have been acquitted – oh, they were smart, the way they hinted, so there was nothing I could do about it. But it meant if people recognised me in the street, they shouted things, so I had to lie again – change my name and dye my hair.’

  Jan gave a sympathetic grimace, but before she could say anything Lisa was going on in that brittle-sounding voice.

  ‘And then there was Lee – Jason, I suppose he was. He started by lying even about his name. I thought he loved me and wanted to help me, but he didn’t. He had another girlfriend, and he laughed about me behind my back. I don’t know why he had to tell me a false name, or why he was with me at all, really. Maybe he was just after the money from selling the flat.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’ Jan asked.

  ‘He picked me up in a shop near where I lived, not long after the trial. He was so sympathetic about what had happened to me – and then after, when the messages started—’ Lisa broke off. Her eyes, which had been drooping, shot wide open and her hand went up to cover her mouth, as if the movement could recapture the words she had uttered.

  ‘Messages?’

  ‘I – I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘Maybe you said that because you needed to tell someone,’ Jan said with gentle persistence.

  ‘If I tell you, will you promise not to tell the police?’

  She could see that the other woman was hesitating. Then Jan said carefully, ‘If the police asked me a direct question about it, I couldn’t lie, Lisa, but I certainly won’t go running to them with anything you tell me – unless it’s criminal.’

  Lisa gave a harsh laugh. ‘Oh, it’s not me that’s criminal! It’s just I know if I told them, they’d try to stitch me up again, say I’d killed Gillis because of the messages.’

  ‘What were they about?’

  ‘Threats. I was going to suffer. I was going to be killed. Maybe they were only threats, meant to drive me crazy – sometimes they almost succeeded. Wherever I moved to, he’d find me. I’d changed my name and my address and my phone, but before long it would start again – “You think you can hide from me, but you can’t.”

  ‘I don’t know how he did it – paid spies, I suppose, he’d plenty money – and Declan and Cara could go on with it, even now Gillis is dead. I can’t escape, ever.’

  ‘You don’t think,’ Jan suggested shrewdly, ‘that perhaps your boyfriend was telling him?’

  Lisa gaped. ‘What?’ But even as she spoke, things began falling into place.

  ‘Perhaps he recognised you in the shop,’ Jan was saying. ‘You said people did, after all the publicity. Perhaps he went to Gillis and got money for telling him where you were, what your phone number was.’

  How could she have been dumb enough not to work it out? Lisa was filled with anger at her own stupidity, but compared to despair, anger was her friend.

  This changed everything. She could escape, after all. Her phone could be disposed of – more carefully this time – and then she could just disappear. Back to London, perhaps – lots of people vanished in London.

  That was her way out. Tomorrow.

  A knock on the door heralded the arrival of the doctor. Lisa submitted to the injection that would give her the rest she knew she needed, and when he left lay with her eyes shut, planning her escape. There was an early bus . . .

  It was only as she was drifting off that it came back to her – the note she had written! She struggled to rouse herself, but the weight of drowsiness made her limbs too heavy to move, and anyway, her thoughts were swirling like mist in her head as she fell into a profound sleep.

  Nico Ryan sat in his little den in the shrubbery. He liked going there: it had a good sort of creepy feeling about it, and if his dad was looking for him and couldn’t find him, he always went mental, and Nico liked that too.

  He was picking at a scab on his knee. He didn’t want it to bleed again, but if he was careful . . . There! The last bit was off and his knee was all smooth again. He’d screamed a lot about it, not because it hurt but because it was part of him that was damaged. He hated that, but it was OK now. He rolled down the leg of his jeans.

  He was bored, and being bored made him angry. He hated being at Rosscarron. There was nothing to do and he wasn’t even allowed in Granddad’s study, where he could play Grand Theft Auto on the computer. Dad had a laptop, but he just said he was using it, and when Nico screamed, his mum didn’t tell Dad to let him have what he wanted, like she usually did. She was weirder than ever these days and they were always yelling at each other and paying no attention to him.

  And there wasn’t even anyone to make him burgers when he wanted them. Cris was never in the kitchen now, and when Nico had gone to his door and banged on it, Cris had said some really bad words and told him to go away. He hadn’t, of course – he’d kicked the door and yelled for a bit, but it hadn’t done any good.

  He realised suddenly that the seat of his jeans was all wet from the damp earth and he got up. It was uncomfortable, but he couldn’t go and put on another pair since all his clothes were in a dirty heap on the floor because Cris hadn’t taken them away to be cleaned. When it was his house, he’d whip Cris and whip him till he did what Nico told him.

  He was brooding on this when a pheasant came stalking past on the drive in front of the house. Stupid bird, with its silly peck-peck-pecking! If he had a gun, he could shoot it. Bang! Bang! He mimed the shots.

  But there was a stone on the ground just beside him. He was quite good at throwing stones. He picked it up and hefted it in his hand, eyeing the oblivious creature. He threw it with all his force, but the bird caught the movement and with a screech of alarm flew off in a clumsy flurry of feathers.

  Stupid, stupid bird! He turned away discontentedly and went back inside.

  He could hear
the grown-ups were talking in the sitting room as he went through the hall. He wasn’t going in there. It was boring, like everything else. There wasn’t even any music playing now and the house felt weird. Nico liked really loud music, played through the speakers.

  He drifted upstairs to his parents’ bedroom. He hadn’t been allowed in there by himself since he spilled some of his father’s expensive cologne on the carpet, so it was good they were out of the way. He made a picture on the mirror with his mother’s make-up, then noticed a pair of scissors on the dressing table.

  Snipping them together experimentally, Nico looked around. There was a soft red and blue rug with silky fringes on the floor by the bed, and he sat down, deciding to cut them off. Then he noticed something.

  Under the bed, there was a laptop. If he took it to his room, he could play with it whenever he liked, even after he was sent to bed at night. He put the scissors back where he had found them and wiped off the mirror picture carefully so no one would know he had been there, then carried the laptop off in triumph to his own room.

  MacNee reread the report that had just come in. It had looked the dull sort of thing he’d not have paid much attention to, if he hadn’t been stuck here, but it was dynamite. Maybe there was something in doing a desk job after all – not that he was going to admit that to Fleming.

  The risk was that she might decide he was more use where he was. On the other hand, she would have to know about this, and it had a lot of implications they’d need to discuss. If he went and told her face to face, it could be quite like old times.

  ‘You again, Tam?’ Fleming greeted him. ‘Another useful bit of digging?’

  ‘Bit of a strange one come in, boss,’ MacNee said, sitting down. ‘I thought you’d maybe like to know before the briefing tonight. Gives the whole thing a twist.’

  Fleming’s ears pricked up. ‘Good twist? Bad twist?’