The Christmas Puzzle (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 8)

by Cecilia Peartree

  ‘Maybe it was an old-fashioned Father Christmas figure she saw,’ suggested Christopher. ‘Based on Odin – wearing a blue hood and a cloak.’

  Keith Burnet looked sceptical but evidently decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. ‘Well, I can’t hang around here all day talking about ancient winter rituals,’ he said, draining his cup and getting to his feet.

  ‘It’s time I was going to meet Jock,’ said Amaryllis, doing the same. ‘Thanks Keith, that was very – enlightening.’

  ‘I don’t know how,’ said Keith. ‘It just confused me more than ever.’

  ‘Any news from forensics yet?’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘Aha, that would be telling!’ said Keith.

  ‘Yes, wouldn’t it?’ murmured Amaryllis as they both left.

  Chapter 22 Jock’s proactive strategy

  Jock had trouble sleeping on the night Giancarlo brought the lasagne. He told himself the Italian food had been too rich, but he knew it was the fact that Tricia had been laughing at him with Jason Penrose that was really bothering him. At some point during the long, dark hours, when he was wondering if he should go downstairs and make a cup of tea and resign himself to declaring it morning, he made a rash decision.

  When he at last woke up in the morning he told himself he had better go through with it. Decisions made in the middle of the night were just as likely to be valid as the daytime ones, except when you had had too much drink, of course. That kind of decision wasn’t likely to make sense at all anyway.

  He had decided not to give up without a fight.

  Not as an abstract concept, but a very specific one. He wasn’t going to cede victory to Jason Penrose over Tricia’s favours without even trying. He would go against centuries of male history and decades of personal experience, and actually make an effort in order to attract a woman.

  He considered asking Amaryllis for advice, but she was only technically a woman, in his opinion, and any advice he got from her would probably include methods for taking out the opposition, something he didn’t plan on having to do.

  The only snag was that he didn’t know how people went about things like this nowadays. It was obvious that Christopher and Amaryllis didn’t have a clue either. He had a brief moment of feeling scornful about their lengthy, mysterious and apparently ill-fated relationship. But that didn’t help. He wondered about Jemima and Dave, who just seemed to have drifted together and stuck together without either of them doing anything proactive.

  Even thinking the word proactive gave him the creeps. It was so modern and therefore, in Jock’s view, so meaningless.

  Obviously he would have to try and be in places where Tricia went. Seeing each other every day was bound to bring them closer together. And the more time she spent with him, the less she would have left over for Jason Penrose. But where did Tricia go? And what did she do there?

  ‘Darren!’ he said out loud as the idea came to him. He needed to speak to Darren. But what was it she had said about Darren the last time she had mentioned him? Something about a course... something to do with animals. ‘Rosie!’ he said. If he spoke to Rosie, he could find out about Darren, and if he found out where Darren was going to be, he could speak to him about where his mother was going to be, and...

  ‘You stupid old fool,’ he said to himself in a whisper, pulling on a sock, which he had been holding since the start of his inner monologue.

  He knew full well that all he was going to do today was to footer around in the house all morning, go dutifully down to the tram at two o’clock and dress up as Santa, try and look cheery for some kids, then pop into the Queen of Scots for a few pints, then go home again. No! He was forgetting something. Giancarlo’s mother was expecting them round for a meal at the end of their gruelling shift in the tram. If only he could have taken Tricia to the restaurant with him.

  He shrugged his shoulders, put on his other sock and stood up.

  One part of his brain was saying things like, ‘What will be, will be,’ and ‘Whatever,’ while another part, the existence of which he was only occasionally aware, was going, ‘Never venture, never gain – go for it!’

  He was disproportionately unsettled by having these contradictory ideas fighting for supremacy inside his head.

  That was why he didn’t look where he was going when he walked out of his front gate later in the morning, and almost fell over a wee dog that was scurrying along the pavement. He gazed at it suspiciously. Wasn’t this the same wee white dog he had seen a few times before, usually accompanied by a grumpy old man?

  On this occasion it wasn’t accompanied by anybody, and was making the most of its freedom by dashing as fast as it could towards the main road.

  It was a sign of the befuddlement inside Jock’s head that instead of ignoring the dog and letting it take its chances with the traffic, he bent down and spoke to it, threading his fingers under the red collar as he did so.

  ‘What are you doing out on your own, you wee scamp?’

  The dog gave a yap and tried to wriggle round and bite the fingers that were holding its collar, but Jock was too quick and moved them in time, still hanging on to the collar. Apart from anything else, he told himself he didn’t want to have to stand by and watch while some idiot driver like Dave squashed the thing into the road surface. Somebody would have to scrape it up then, which wouldn’t be very nice.

  Jock tugged at the collar and succeeded in dragging the dog into his front garden, where he closed the gate firmly. He planned to go into the house and find something to use as a lead.

  Just then he heard somebody calling his name.

  ‘Jock! I never realised you had a dog!’

  Of course he knew as surely as if he had conjured her up that it was Tricia Laidlaw. He turned slowly from his front door and gave a strained smile.

  ‘What a lovely wee dog too,’ said Tricia, smiling back in a way that wasn’t at all strained.

  ‘It isn’t mine,’ said Jock.

  Tricia came into the garden and approached the dog.

  ‘Mind it doesn’t get out,’ said Jock. He went down the path and closed the gate again, trying not to make the click sound reproachful.

  Tricia was tickling the dog’s ears. It didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Do you know who it belongs to?’

  ‘I think it’s maybe that grumpy old man I’ve seen around lately,’ said Jock. ‘Well, at least he’s been a bit grumpy with me. But maybe that’s my own fault,’ he added hastily, and hoped she wasn’t thinking, ‘It takes one to know one’.

  ‘Do you know his name or where he lives?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue. I’ve seen him down near the Queen of Scots, but he was heading for Pitkirtly Island that time.’

  ‘Oh dear. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I was going to find something to use as a lead and take him round the town a bit,’ said Jock, glad he had already thought up this not very complex plan and wasn’t stuck for something to say.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said Tricia. ‘I’ll come with you if you like. In case you need somebody to take a turn at holding on to him.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jock. ‘I’ll just go and get a bit of string or something.’

  A few minutes later he and Tricia and the dog were walking companionably down the High Street. Jock couldn’t believe getting some time with Tricia had turned out to be so simple.

  ‘Were you on your way somewhere just now?’ he enquired.

  ‘I’d just been up at my Auntie Ena’s to see if she needed anything from the shops. She lives a bit further up the road from you, but she doesn’t get out much.’

  ‘Let me know if I can give you a hand with carrying things up there some time,’ said Jock. He shook his head. Where had that sentence come from? It seemed to have come out quite spontaneously without him actually thinking about it first. He warned himself not to get too spontaneous. There was no knowing where that sort of thing would end.

  ‘It’s all right – she gets most of it delivered. I
only have to buy bread sometimes. She doesn’t eat much these days, poor old thing.’

  They were chatting quite naturally by the time they reached the bakers’ shop halfway down the High Street. Jock noticed Mr Whitmore lurking outside the newsagents’ a bit further on, and decided to wait while Tricia went in for some of the wee French cakes from the window. He hoped they weren’t for Jason Penrose.

  He was standing there, quite liking the fact that he had a dog with him as an excuse for being out and about, when he found himself being shouted at.

  ‘You give him back right this minute! He’s mine!’

  It was the grumpy old man, approaching at a gallop down the hill. He wrested the improvised lead – an old bit of hairy string from a drawer in the kitchen – from Jock’s hand and gave it a tug, which encouraged the dog to stand up.

  ‘How did you get hold of him?’

  ‘Hold on a minute – I just stopped him from hurtling into the traffic,’ said Jock. He was surprised to find that the grumpy man could speak in whole sentences when he wanted to. ‘We were looking for you, to give him back.’

  Tricia came out of the bakers’ at that moment.

  ‘Hello, Mr Greig,’ she said in mild surprise. ‘I haven’t seen you for a while.’

  ‘Hmph!’ said the grumpy old man and tugged at the string again. ‘Come on, Hamish.’

  The white dog followed him obediently down the street, but cast what seemed to be a longing glance back at Tricia, or maybe it was at the bag of cakes in her hand.

  ‘Hamish?’ said Jock. ‘That’s a funny name for a dog.’

  Tricia laughed. ‘Well, it’s Scottish, anyway.’

  ‘You called him Mr Greig. Do you know him, then?’

  ‘Not really. He lived up near Auntie Ena years ago, but I think he moved further down the hill. I haven’t seen him about lately.’

  ‘Maybe the dog got confused and he was trying to go back to the old house,’ Jock suggested.

  ‘Oh, no, he didn’t have the dog when he lived there. His wife was allergic to animals, I think. Or maybe it was his daughter.’

  ‘How does his wife put up with him?’ said Jock, steering Tricia across the road to avoid Mr Whitmore. She didn’t put up much of a resistance.

  ‘Oh, his wife left him ages ago, I think,’ said Tricia vaguely.

  Jock had an uneasy feeling that something of what she had just said was somehow significant. He tried to work out what it was, if only so that Amaryllis wouldn’t be angry later on when it turned out to be the key to everything that had happened in Pitkirtly for the past fifty years. But it eluded him for the moment. It was probably only significant in his imagination.

  Of more immediate importance was the fact that he and Tricia were still walking down the road together, even without the dog to unite them. Jock had lost track of where he was going, but it didn’t really matter.

  Chapter 23 Among my souvenirs

  ‘There’s no sign of it in the car park,’ said Zak, making Christopher jump.

  ‘No sign of what?’

  ‘The letter. Maybe somebody did throw it in the bin.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Christopher. ‘There are plenty more where that came from.’

  He was conscious it wasn’t the kind of thing someone who had once been a professional archivist should have said, but in this case he felt well and truly justified. He had spent part of that day browsing in the remaining McCallum letters, and the content was so specific and trivial that he couldn’t imagine a social historian of the future having much use for them. They referred to people nobody would ever hear of again, and events that weren’t even of local Pitkirtly interest, being mostly small family parties at which the highlight was usually that at least one of the participants would drink too much and have to be taken home early. Or, in the case of the very young members of the family, ingest too much food colouring and sugar, bite one of the others and have to be removed before all the screaming caused a mass outbreak of deafness. He could picture it all only too easily.

  Instead of retreating to the comparative safety of the Folk Museum, Zak sat down in one of the office chairs. Christopher hoped he wasn’t about to hand in his notice, driven away at last by the combined and often conflicting demands of Jemima and Maisie Sue, or tempted by the offer of a better job in Edinburgh or Glasgow or, worse still, Clackmannanshire Museums and Libraries.

  ‘But what if somebody stole it?’ said Zak.

  ‘Why on earth should somebody want it?’ countered Christopher.

  ‘Maybe that letter’s got something to do with the murder,’ said Zak, eyes gleaming.

  Had he been spending time with Amaryllis? It was almost as if he had been infected by her fervour for solving puzzles.

  ‘Why on earth should it?’ said Christopher.

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s funny, isn’t it? The letter goes missing – there’s a piece that’s damaged on the microfilm – there’s a gap in the police records. And they all have something to do with Pitkirtly in the nineties. Isn’t it all just too much of a coincidence?’

  ‘Life’s just one big coincidence,’ said Christopher, sweeping his arm round to indicate the extent to which he was generalising. Unfortunately he swept his coffee cup right off the desk. Fortunately he had already drunk most of the coffee. ‘But still, I wouldn’t mention all that to anybody else if I were you. If the wrong person gets to hear about it, you could be in danger.’

  ‘Have you been drinking, Mr Wilson?’ said Zak, laughing. ‘That’s a bit over the top, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve only had a couple of coffees today,’ said Christopher. ‘And I can tell, you, there’s more danger around than you might think.’

  Zak sobered up suddenly. ‘You don’t need to tell me that.’

  ‘Sorry. I forgot. But don’t go down any dark lanes – or into that old railway yard. Or out to the Island on your own.’ Christopher tried to remember all the places in Pitkirtly that had proved dangerous in the past. ‘And don’t start speculating aloud when there might be other people listening.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Zak. ‘I’ll be careful... Better get back to the Folk Museum now. There was a bit of an argument starting up about how to depict the mining disaster of 1863 in quilted form.’

  He left Christopher in suspense about what there was to argue about in a mining disaster, but it wasn’t interesting enough to investigate further.

  Christopher strolled to the window and glanced out to the car park. Everything seemed calm enough there. He wasn’t sure where his feeling of impending doom had come from. Maybe it was just the approach of the Christmas season that had done it. Or maybe it was the weather. It was one of those overcast days when you began to wonder if you would ever see daylight again. But at least it wasn’t raining or, worse still, snowing.

  The man with the little white dog crossed in front of someone with a laden shopping trolley who just managed to avoid a collision. The hand and arm gestures involved were quite amusing.

  There was something about that man... He was the one whose dog had tripped up Jemima and who had then made up for it by helping her back on to her feet. If he was heading for the Island for a walk, he’d better hurry up or it would be pitch dark and treacherous underfoot.

  Something roared past the window like an incoming dragon. Christopher told himself off for being fanciful, and peered out to see if he could discern what it really was. Jason’s motorbike. Of course. He wondered if he should lock the office door. He was still wondering when it opened so violently that it swung back against the wall and made the furniture shake. He turned to see who had come in, although he had already guessed.

  ‘What is it with these local policemen?’ said Jason Penrose, stalking forward and slamming his leather gloves down on Christopher’s desk. He had evidently lost his famous cool. ‘I thought you were going to speak to them?’

  ‘I don’t think I promised...’

  ‘I don’t suppose they’d take any notice of you anyway. I should
have gone to a higher authority.’

  Christopher didn’t get angry very often, but he was offended by Jason’s assumption, correct though it might be, that as the director of the Cultural Centre he didn’t wield any influence in the town. But little did Jason know about the vital information Christopher had up his sleeve. He wasn’t sure whether to reveal it right away or whether to hold the cards close to his chest...

  It was mostly to avoid mixing metaphors that he decided to speak.

  ‘I’ve had a word with the police,’ he said mildly as Jason paced up and down in front of the desk.

  The other man came to a halt and fixed Christopher with a glare.

  ‘I’m not sure you’re going to like this,’ said Christopher, ploughing resolutely on.

  ‘Tell me anyway,’ said Jason in a low, dangerous tone.

  ‘According to a usually reliable source inside the police force,’ said Christopher, suddenly conscious of not wanting to drop Keith Burnet in it by mentioning him by name, ‘you yourself planted the archaeological finds you later claimed to have discovered in the excavation in the garden.’

  Jason stared blankly at Christopher for a whole minute before sitting down hard on the nearest chair and putting his head in his hands.

  Now that it had come to this, Christopher didn’t enjoy seeing the man crumple, no matter how annoying he had been. He gave Jason a few moments in the hope he would pull himself together, and then said, ‘What on earth was the point of it?’

  ‘I needed a new discovery for my blog,’ mumbled Jason.

  ‘Your blog?’

  ‘I’ve got sixty-thousand followers,’ said Jason, raising his head for a moment and staring at Christopher. ‘They expect me to come up with exciting stuff all the time. It’s relentless. You’re only as good as your latest mosaic floor. Or Viking fire ship.’

  ‘But couldn’t you write about something more – academic – in between times?’ said Christopher.

  Jason’s mouth twisted scornfully. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’